Saturday, July 09, 2005
MAD COW DISEASE
29 in sick cow's herd test negative for mad cow Twenty-nine cattle screened for mad cow disease tested negative, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said today. No further tests are required on those animals, USDA spokesman Jim Rogers said. The department also said today that 38 other animals were being screened for mad cow and that those results are still pending. The animals must be killed before they can be screened because officials run tests on brain samples from the animals. The tests on the 67 cattle are part of the department's ongoing investigation into a recently confirmed case of mad cow disease in a Texas beef cow....
USDA under fire over BSE case in Texas Consumers may not know what to make of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s handling of the Texas cow stricken with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, but some of the nation’s major newspapers in their editorial columns are blasting USDA bumbling. The editorial ink began flowing on this side of the Pacific last week, four weeks after the USDA announced that an internal investigation prompted retesting of brain tissue, resulting in the June 24 confirmation of the first native-born BSE case. “The more federal officials downplay mad cow disease, the scarier things get,” said a Los Angeles Times editorial beneath the headline “Mad beef policy.” Clifford said the BSE cow was born on the ranch and remained there until sent to auction. That narrows the search for possible feedstuff contaminated with the BSE-causing agent, but gives Food and Drug Administration investigators a trail more than 10 years old. At midweek, FDA had nothing to report on that part of the investigation. There are also said to be “spontaneous” cases of BSE at a rate of about one in every 1 million head of cattle....
U.S. Treasury Secretary expects border to re-open to Canadian cattle The U.S. government expects to be successful next week in overturning a lower court ruling that has delayed its plans to reopen the border to live Canadian cattle. U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow said Saturday that the four month-old injunction preventing the border from reopening was "ill considered" and not based on scientific facts. "We're pressing hard, the Justice Department is appealing that injunction seeking to get that injunction removed, and I trust that we'll be successful in those efforts," Snow said in Calgary at the end of two days of bilateral trade talks between top finance officials in Canada and the U.S. The appeal is slated for July 13 in Seattle and will be followed "very, very closely" by the Canadian government, federal Finance Minister Ralph Goodale said Saturday....
New Zealand lifts ban on Canadian beef Agriculture Minister Andy Mitchell said New Zealand is immediately lifting all its mad-cow-related restrictions on Canadian beef. He said New Zealand food safety authorities have acknowledged the safety of Canadian beef with respect to bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. It's the 15th country to resume beef trading since borders were closed in May of 2003, when a single case of mad-cow disease was discovered in the country...
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29 in sick cow's herd test negative for mad cow Twenty-nine cattle screened for mad cow disease tested negative, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said today. No further tests are required on those animals, USDA spokesman Jim Rogers said. The department also said today that 38 other animals were being screened for mad cow and that those results are still pending. The animals must be killed before they can be screened because officials run tests on brain samples from the animals. The tests on the 67 cattle are part of the department's ongoing investigation into a recently confirmed case of mad cow disease in a Texas beef cow....
USDA under fire over BSE case in Texas Consumers may not know what to make of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s handling of the Texas cow stricken with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, but some of the nation’s major newspapers in their editorial columns are blasting USDA bumbling. The editorial ink began flowing on this side of the Pacific last week, four weeks after the USDA announced that an internal investigation prompted retesting of brain tissue, resulting in the June 24 confirmation of the first native-born BSE case. “The more federal officials downplay mad cow disease, the scarier things get,” said a Los Angeles Times editorial beneath the headline “Mad beef policy.” Clifford said the BSE cow was born on the ranch and remained there until sent to auction. That narrows the search for possible feedstuff contaminated with the BSE-causing agent, but gives Food and Drug Administration investigators a trail more than 10 years old. At midweek, FDA had nothing to report on that part of the investigation. There are also said to be “spontaneous” cases of BSE at a rate of about one in every 1 million head of cattle....
U.S. Treasury Secretary expects border to re-open to Canadian cattle The U.S. government expects to be successful next week in overturning a lower court ruling that has delayed its plans to reopen the border to live Canadian cattle. U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow said Saturday that the four month-old injunction preventing the border from reopening was "ill considered" and not based on scientific facts. "We're pressing hard, the Justice Department is appealing that injunction seeking to get that injunction removed, and I trust that we'll be successful in those efforts," Snow said in Calgary at the end of two days of bilateral trade talks between top finance officials in Canada and the U.S. The appeal is slated for July 13 in Seattle and will be followed "very, very closely" by the Canadian government, federal Finance Minister Ralph Goodale said Saturday....
New Zealand lifts ban on Canadian beef Agriculture Minister Andy Mitchell said New Zealand is immediately lifting all its mad-cow-related restrictions on Canadian beef. He said New Zealand food safety authorities have acknowledged the safety of Canadian beef with respect to bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. It's the 15th country to resume beef trading since borders were closed in May of 2003, when a single case of mad-cow disease was discovered in the country...
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Friday, July 08, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Utah sentator to introduce federal property rights bill On the heels of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that paves the way for governments to seize people's homes and businesses _ even against their will _ for private economic development, U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch on Tuesday announced plans to introduce a bill giving land and homeowners more protections. The Utah Republican called the court's June 23 ruling in Kelo v. New London "alarming" because it gives the government unprecedented abilities, but intends to curb that with the EMPOWER Act, which Hatch said he will introduce next week. The act would force governments to fairly negotiate with property owners, including the payment of fair compensation. It would also establish a federal ombudsmen's office to inform property owners of their rights and order disputes into mediation, if needed. Hatch isn't the only one in Congress unhappy with the high court ruling. So far at least five other senators and representatives have announced plans for legislation to chip away at the court's decision. Hatch said his legislation is patterned after Utah's own property rights law. "It's a simple model, but it has been an outstanding success," Hatch said. "(It) doesn't change the rules of when eminent domain can be sought by a government agency, but it does provide a dramatic improvement for the property owner once that decision has been made."....
Fort Trumbull resident says she has not yet begun to fight The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against them, but a group of New London residents are not giving up the fight to save their homes from development. People living in the Fort Trumbull area say the fight has just begun. Late last month the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Kelo, ruled the city could take her home and others in this neighborhood, for development which it says would benefit the entire community. You might think a Supreme Court decision would be the final chapter. But Kelo doesn't think that way. "We're gonna go to the House of Representatives in Washington, we're gonna legislate in the legislature in the State of Connecticut, we're gonna continue to fight." In her letter to the editor today, Susette Kelo says when the developers come here, quote, “I will chase them from my property. We will not leave our homes. We have not yet begun to fight.” "It's pretty tough to do all this work, and continue with your life and work full-time jobs and everything else." But Kelo won't quit now, won't even think of it....
Cornyn pushes border security Dr. Mike Vickers is a rancher 10 miles south of Falfurrias and practices veterinary medicine in 10 counties here in South Texas. He was one of about 70 people who attended the roundtable and knows firsthand about the problems of lax border security. Vickers said large groups of illegal immigrants routinely cross his property to an adjacent roadside park in an effort to avoid the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint about 4½ miles away on U.S. 281. Some of them break the floats on the water sources for his cattle and cause other types of property damage.“There’s no less than a hundred people coming through my side of the highway every night, coming to that park,” he said. “And the Border Patrol don’t have the resources to put 24-hour surveillance on it. Consequently, my cattle are on the highway, and my fences are being cut. I have a regular fence crew working every single day to repair my fences.” Cornyn and U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., are finalizing a bill tentatively titled the Comprehensive En-forcement and Immigration Reform Act of 2005. The bill provides for enhanced border security, en-hanced interior enforcement, an employer accountability program and a temporary worker program. It calls for, among other things, $5 billion to hire 10,000 new Border Patrol agents and 1,000 new immi-gration inspectors for ports of entry over the next five years....
Extradition ordered in ecoterror case A court yesterday ordered the extradition of suspected eco-terrorist Tre Arrow, one of the FBI's most-wanted fugitives, to face firebombing charges in the United States. Arrow, born Michael Scarpitti, is accused of participating in the 2001 firebombing of logging and cement trucks in Oregon. The FBI contends he is associated with the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), a group that has claimed responsibility for dozens of acts of destruction over the past few years. British Columbia Supreme Court Judge Kristi Gill ruled that there was enough evidence against Arrow to have him extradited to face federal charges. His lawyer said he would appeal, a process that could take months. Arrow -- who says the trees told him to change his name -- last week told the court that he was innocent of the charges and a target of a government conspiracy....
Incident reports remain light at Rainbow Family gathering The Rainbow Family's gathering in the name of peace, love and understanding was relatively peaceful - with the understanding that putting 10,000 campers on one site may not lead to a total love fest. The communal campout in the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia ended Thursday, according to the counterculture group's unofficial Web site. But about 3,000 people remained camped at the site Thursday afternoon, the Pocahontas County Sheriff's Office estimated. At least 10,000 Rainbow Family members converged in a large mountain meadow to pray for world peace July 4, an event that traditionally caps the family's annual gathering in a national forest. Through Monday, the U.S. Forest Service had issued 944 citations, mostly for minor offenses such as violating the terms of a group camping permit....
Hopi to sue Forest Service Late Tuesday evening, the Hopi Tribal Council authorized the tribe to pursue legal action against the U.S. Forest Service to protect the San Francisco Peaks in Flagstaff from the proposed Arizona Snowbowl expansion. On June 24, DNA People's Legal Services Inc. on behalf of the Hualapai Tribe, Navajo Medicine Man Norris Nez, and Hopi leader, Bill Bucky Preston, filed a complaint in U.S. District Court alleging three potential adverse impacts from Alternative 2 of the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS), chosen as the preferred alternative by the U.S. Forest Service. In addition, they claim the FEIS admitted that a portion of those impacts are irreversible; that all written communication to tribes and Native Americans was provided only in the English language and that "despite explicit requests to do so, those documents were never translated by the Forest Service into any Native American language, whether written or by audio- or videotape."....
The Great Alaskan Morel Rush of '05 Jay Southard waits just south of mile marker 1313 on the Alaska Highway. It's early June, and the temperature at 8 p.m. is in the 40s, with a raw wind running off the Alaska Range, which rises, iron-colored and veined with snow, in the near distance. Southard is not looking at the mountains, but at the highway running through the center of the town of Tok, keeping an eye out for a red Ford van carrying eight Mexican mushroom pickers. Just because they've been selling him their hauls of morels—450 pounds one day, a little more than 500 the next—doesn't mean they'll sell to him today. If the Weasel got to the Mexicans, Southard might as well pack up and go back home. With several tons of mushroom-drying equipment and $20,000 of setup here in Tok, this is something he really, really does not want to do. A former Oregon State fullback who raises and trains horses when he's not working the mushroom circuit, Southard appears to have a grip on his anxiety, but just barely. He and the other mushroom wranglers who've come to Tok are betting that the 2005 morel harvest will be the big score, the mother lode, that the elements that cause mushrooms to grow—wildfire, rain, sunlight—will continue to collude. But tonight, it's the human element that threatens to bring the enterprise crashing down. Has the Weasel upped his price per pound? Have the Mexicans turned fickle?....
State giving sage grouse room to grow A 12,000-acre tract in northwest Colorado owned by the State Land Board will become a pilot recovery project for sage grouse and other sage species, state officials said Thursday. The state Department of Natural Resources, the land board's parent, has committed $120,000 over five years to improve management of the Baker Peak property, a block of arid brush and grasses near Craig. On it, biologists have identified "leks," or the dancing grounds used by mating sage grouse, a chunky, ground-dwelling bird whose population declined dramatically in the 20th century....
Bridge raised for tall ships, stays up for birds As soon as the birds can go up, the bridge can go down. Last week, the city raised the 94-year-old Murray Morgan Bridge to allow high-masted vessels from the Tall Ships Festival to come and go from the city's Thea Foss Waterway. The rickety lift bridge, however, got stuck in the "up" position. It's a simple fix, repair crews say, but doing so would put them within arm's reach of a pair of fledgling peregrine falcons, and state Department of Transportation workers don't want to disturb the protected birds until they can fly. They figure waiting two weeks will give the falcons time to get airborne....
Sockeye run spawns mystery Two years ago, millions of ocean-bound juvenile sockeye passed the locks in Ballard. The numbers were promising -- delighting both anglers and biologists. This week, when the fish should be returning in force, observers were distressed. Tourists frequently outnumbered salmon passing through the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks. "We should be getting 10,000, 20,000 fish a day, and we're getting 1,000 to 2,000," said Mike Mahovlich, a fish biologist with the Muckleshoot Tribe. "We've lost 90 percent of our fish in the marine area." The situation is so dire the tribe is forgoing its usual harvest of about a thousand sockeye for ceremonial events and needy tribal members....
Column: Animal Rights and Animal Nuts An important trial began in New Jersey in early June. The defendants are the leaders and members of the U.S. chapter of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) who Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles McKenna described as a group of stalkers and criminal instigators who terrorized families through "a campaign of thuggery and intimidation." Both in England and here, Huntingdon, a company that undertakes animal-based research for pharmaceutical and other companies, has been targeted by SHAC. The six "activists", as one newspaper characterized them, are being prosecuted under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. "These defendants," McKenna told the jury, "were going to drive this company out of business at any cost and there was no end to what they were going to do." The tactics they used involved all kinds of intimidation such as making threatening phone calls and even included overturning cars belonging to Huntingdon executives and workers. Suffice it to say, most reasonable people would conclude that their tactics went way beyond "advocacy" and, as their lawyer postulated, their right to free speech....
Team begins bathing presidents Neglect washing your face for 65 years and you're likely to start seeing the effects - dirt, grime, lichen microbes. In an extreme makeover of monumental proportions, a team of rappelling pressure washers planned to start giving the four presidents atop Mount Rushmore National Memorial their first-ever facials. Thorsten Mowes, a technician with the German company leading the project, started the work shortly after 2 p.m. Thursday, hitting the left side of Thomas Jefferson's forehead with a stream of pressurized water....
Scientists to Study Ancient American After nearly a decade of court battles, scientists have finally been allowed to study Kennewick Man, one of the oldest and most complete skeletons ever found in North America. Ever since they were discovered in 1996 along the shores of the Columbia River in Washington state, the 9,200- to 9,500-year-old remains have been at the center of a bitter battle between scientists — who want to study the bones — and Native Americans, who claim Kennewick Man as an ancestor. The court battle began with a lawsuit filed against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers by eight scientists seeking access to study the bones. The agency had jurisdiction over the site where the skeleton was discovered and planned to honor the tribes' request to repatriate the bones under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. In February 2004, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the anthropologists, concluding that "a significant relationship of the tribal claimants with Kennewick Man" could not be proved....
Dinosaur Track Found in Alaskan Park A track from a three-toed dinosaur believed to be about 70 million years old has been discovered in Denali National Park, the first evidence that the animals roamed there, scientists said. The footprint was found June 27 by a University of Alaska Fairbanks student taking a geology field course. The fossil is 9 inches long and 6 inches wide, officials said. The discovery's importance was its location in Interior Alaska, far from the coastline where other tracks have been found, said Anthony Fiorillo, curator of earth sciences at the Dallas Museum of Natural History....
Editorial: Negotiation may resolve CBM impasse The stakes in the coalbed methane development litigation have come into sharper focus this summer with a series of court rulings. Several lawsuits have challenged the development of natural gas wells in the coal seams of Montana's Powder River Basin. Federal courts have decided that the Bureau of Land Management didn't comply with federal law in preparing the environmental impact statement needed before full-field development can commence and that some wells now in production under that EIS must be shut down. The Bush administration's push to open federal lands to oil and gas development seems to have collided with the provisions of the National Environmental Protection Act. What's at stake is millions of dollars invested by energy companies and millions of dollars in royalties and revenues for county, state and federal governments. On the other side of the battle, ranchers, irrigating farmers and other area residents contend that proposed development threatens the quality and quantity of underground and surface water sources they depend on for their homes and livelihoods....
A bit of black cowboy history comes to East Bay with rodeo For 21 years, the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo has celebrated the contributions of African Americans in the development of the American frontier in general and rodeos in particular. The ridin' and ropin' "Salute to Black Cowboys and Cowgirls," named after the creator of bulldogging — the forerunner of modern steer wrestling — began in Denver, soon adding the Rowell Ranch Rodeo Arena in Hayward to its list of competitive stops. Now the 10-city nationwide rodeo tour returns to the Rowell rodeo arena Saturday and Sunday. Pickett, billed as the "Dusky Demon" on Wild West show fliers and on rodeo circuit advertisements, died in 1932 at the age of 62. In 1971, he was the first African-American cowboy to be inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City. The following year, he was named to the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs, Colo....
Team ropers enjoy a crackling Fourth The weather is getting hot, and so are team ropers Clay Tryan and Patrick Smith. Hotter than a Fourth of July firecracker, you could say. The two Midland cowboys first teamed up at the beginning of the year but have performed like they have been together forever. Their most recent accomplishment came Monday when they wrapped up their Cowboy Christmas (a.k.a the lucrative Fourth of July weekend) by winning the Greeley (Colo.) Independence Day Stampede. A 5.6-second run in the Wrangler ProRodeo Tour round sealed the title for the sport's hottest tandem, which won the Bob Feist Invitational and Pace Picante ProRodeo Chute-out during the past 30 days. Their aggregate victory in Greeley (18.1 seconds on three head) earned each $4,051 and elevated them to the top spots in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association standings. Tryan, the header, and Smith, the heeler, have won $54,072 each this season....
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Utah sentator to introduce federal property rights bill On the heels of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that paves the way for governments to seize people's homes and businesses _ even against their will _ for private economic development, U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch on Tuesday announced plans to introduce a bill giving land and homeowners more protections. The Utah Republican called the court's June 23 ruling in Kelo v. New London "alarming" because it gives the government unprecedented abilities, but intends to curb that with the EMPOWER Act, which Hatch said he will introduce next week. The act would force governments to fairly negotiate with property owners, including the payment of fair compensation. It would also establish a federal ombudsmen's office to inform property owners of their rights and order disputes into mediation, if needed. Hatch isn't the only one in Congress unhappy with the high court ruling. So far at least five other senators and representatives have announced plans for legislation to chip away at the court's decision. Hatch said his legislation is patterned after Utah's own property rights law. "It's a simple model, but it has been an outstanding success," Hatch said. "(It) doesn't change the rules of when eminent domain can be sought by a government agency, but it does provide a dramatic improvement for the property owner once that decision has been made."....
Fort Trumbull resident says she has not yet begun to fight The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against them, but a group of New London residents are not giving up the fight to save their homes from development. People living in the Fort Trumbull area say the fight has just begun. Late last month the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Kelo, ruled the city could take her home and others in this neighborhood, for development which it says would benefit the entire community. You might think a Supreme Court decision would be the final chapter. But Kelo doesn't think that way. "We're gonna go to the House of Representatives in Washington, we're gonna legislate in the legislature in the State of Connecticut, we're gonna continue to fight." In her letter to the editor today, Susette Kelo says when the developers come here, quote, “I will chase them from my property. We will not leave our homes. We have not yet begun to fight.” "It's pretty tough to do all this work, and continue with your life and work full-time jobs and everything else." But Kelo won't quit now, won't even think of it....
Cornyn pushes border security Dr. Mike Vickers is a rancher 10 miles south of Falfurrias and practices veterinary medicine in 10 counties here in South Texas. He was one of about 70 people who attended the roundtable and knows firsthand about the problems of lax border security. Vickers said large groups of illegal immigrants routinely cross his property to an adjacent roadside park in an effort to avoid the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint about 4½ miles away on U.S. 281. Some of them break the floats on the water sources for his cattle and cause other types of property damage.“There’s no less than a hundred people coming through my side of the highway every night, coming to that park,” he said. “And the Border Patrol don’t have the resources to put 24-hour surveillance on it. Consequently, my cattle are on the highway, and my fences are being cut. I have a regular fence crew working every single day to repair my fences.” Cornyn and U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., are finalizing a bill tentatively titled the Comprehensive En-forcement and Immigration Reform Act of 2005. The bill provides for enhanced border security, en-hanced interior enforcement, an employer accountability program and a temporary worker program. It calls for, among other things, $5 billion to hire 10,000 new Border Patrol agents and 1,000 new immi-gration inspectors for ports of entry over the next five years....
Extradition ordered in ecoterror case A court yesterday ordered the extradition of suspected eco-terrorist Tre Arrow, one of the FBI's most-wanted fugitives, to face firebombing charges in the United States. Arrow, born Michael Scarpitti, is accused of participating in the 2001 firebombing of logging and cement trucks in Oregon. The FBI contends he is associated with the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), a group that has claimed responsibility for dozens of acts of destruction over the past few years. British Columbia Supreme Court Judge Kristi Gill ruled that there was enough evidence against Arrow to have him extradited to face federal charges. His lawyer said he would appeal, a process that could take months. Arrow -- who says the trees told him to change his name -- last week told the court that he was innocent of the charges and a target of a government conspiracy....
Incident reports remain light at Rainbow Family gathering The Rainbow Family's gathering in the name of peace, love and understanding was relatively peaceful - with the understanding that putting 10,000 campers on one site may not lead to a total love fest. The communal campout in the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia ended Thursday, according to the counterculture group's unofficial Web site. But about 3,000 people remained camped at the site Thursday afternoon, the Pocahontas County Sheriff's Office estimated. At least 10,000 Rainbow Family members converged in a large mountain meadow to pray for world peace July 4, an event that traditionally caps the family's annual gathering in a national forest. Through Monday, the U.S. Forest Service had issued 944 citations, mostly for minor offenses such as violating the terms of a group camping permit....
Hopi to sue Forest Service Late Tuesday evening, the Hopi Tribal Council authorized the tribe to pursue legal action against the U.S. Forest Service to protect the San Francisco Peaks in Flagstaff from the proposed Arizona Snowbowl expansion. On June 24, DNA People's Legal Services Inc. on behalf of the Hualapai Tribe, Navajo Medicine Man Norris Nez, and Hopi leader, Bill Bucky Preston, filed a complaint in U.S. District Court alleging three potential adverse impacts from Alternative 2 of the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS), chosen as the preferred alternative by the U.S. Forest Service. In addition, they claim the FEIS admitted that a portion of those impacts are irreversible; that all written communication to tribes and Native Americans was provided only in the English language and that "despite explicit requests to do so, those documents were never translated by the Forest Service into any Native American language, whether written or by audio- or videotape."....
The Great Alaskan Morel Rush of '05 Jay Southard waits just south of mile marker 1313 on the Alaska Highway. It's early June, and the temperature at 8 p.m. is in the 40s, with a raw wind running off the Alaska Range, which rises, iron-colored and veined with snow, in the near distance. Southard is not looking at the mountains, but at the highway running through the center of the town of Tok, keeping an eye out for a red Ford van carrying eight Mexican mushroom pickers. Just because they've been selling him their hauls of morels—450 pounds one day, a little more than 500 the next—doesn't mean they'll sell to him today. If the Weasel got to the Mexicans, Southard might as well pack up and go back home. With several tons of mushroom-drying equipment and $20,000 of setup here in Tok, this is something he really, really does not want to do. A former Oregon State fullback who raises and trains horses when he's not working the mushroom circuit, Southard appears to have a grip on his anxiety, but just barely. He and the other mushroom wranglers who've come to Tok are betting that the 2005 morel harvest will be the big score, the mother lode, that the elements that cause mushrooms to grow—wildfire, rain, sunlight—will continue to collude. But tonight, it's the human element that threatens to bring the enterprise crashing down. Has the Weasel upped his price per pound? Have the Mexicans turned fickle?....
State giving sage grouse room to grow A 12,000-acre tract in northwest Colorado owned by the State Land Board will become a pilot recovery project for sage grouse and other sage species, state officials said Thursday. The state Department of Natural Resources, the land board's parent, has committed $120,000 over five years to improve management of the Baker Peak property, a block of arid brush and grasses near Craig. On it, biologists have identified "leks," or the dancing grounds used by mating sage grouse, a chunky, ground-dwelling bird whose population declined dramatically in the 20th century....
Bridge raised for tall ships, stays up for birds As soon as the birds can go up, the bridge can go down. Last week, the city raised the 94-year-old Murray Morgan Bridge to allow high-masted vessels from the Tall Ships Festival to come and go from the city's Thea Foss Waterway. The rickety lift bridge, however, got stuck in the "up" position. It's a simple fix, repair crews say, but doing so would put them within arm's reach of a pair of fledgling peregrine falcons, and state Department of Transportation workers don't want to disturb the protected birds until they can fly. They figure waiting two weeks will give the falcons time to get airborne....
Sockeye run spawns mystery Two years ago, millions of ocean-bound juvenile sockeye passed the locks in Ballard. The numbers were promising -- delighting both anglers and biologists. This week, when the fish should be returning in force, observers were distressed. Tourists frequently outnumbered salmon passing through the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks. "We should be getting 10,000, 20,000 fish a day, and we're getting 1,000 to 2,000," said Mike Mahovlich, a fish biologist with the Muckleshoot Tribe. "We've lost 90 percent of our fish in the marine area." The situation is so dire the tribe is forgoing its usual harvest of about a thousand sockeye for ceremonial events and needy tribal members....
Column: Animal Rights and Animal Nuts An important trial began in New Jersey in early June. The defendants are the leaders and members of the U.S. chapter of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) who Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles McKenna described as a group of stalkers and criminal instigators who terrorized families through "a campaign of thuggery and intimidation." Both in England and here, Huntingdon, a company that undertakes animal-based research for pharmaceutical and other companies, has been targeted by SHAC. The six "activists", as one newspaper characterized them, are being prosecuted under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. "These defendants," McKenna told the jury, "were going to drive this company out of business at any cost and there was no end to what they were going to do." The tactics they used involved all kinds of intimidation such as making threatening phone calls and even included overturning cars belonging to Huntingdon executives and workers. Suffice it to say, most reasonable people would conclude that their tactics went way beyond "advocacy" and, as their lawyer postulated, their right to free speech....
Team begins bathing presidents Neglect washing your face for 65 years and you're likely to start seeing the effects - dirt, grime, lichen microbes. In an extreme makeover of monumental proportions, a team of rappelling pressure washers planned to start giving the four presidents atop Mount Rushmore National Memorial their first-ever facials. Thorsten Mowes, a technician with the German company leading the project, started the work shortly after 2 p.m. Thursday, hitting the left side of Thomas Jefferson's forehead with a stream of pressurized water....
Scientists to Study Ancient American After nearly a decade of court battles, scientists have finally been allowed to study Kennewick Man, one of the oldest and most complete skeletons ever found in North America. Ever since they were discovered in 1996 along the shores of the Columbia River in Washington state, the 9,200- to 9,500-year-old remains have been at the center of a bitter battle between scientists — who want to study the bones — and Native Americans, who claim Kennewick Man as an ancestor. The court battle began with a lawsuit filed against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers by eight scientists seeking access to study the bones. The agency had jurisdiction over the site where the skeleton was discovered and planned to honor the tribes' request to repatriate the bones under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. In February 2004, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the anthropologists, concluding that "a significant relationship of the tribal claimants with Kennewick Man" could not be proved....
Dinosaur Track Found in Alaskan Park A track from a three-toed dinosaur believed to be about 70 million years old has been discovered in Denali National Park, the first evidence that the animals roamed there, scientists said. The footprint was found June 27 by a University of Alaska Fairbanks student taking a geology field course. The fossil is 9 inches long and 6 inches wide, officials said. The discovery's importance was its location in Interior Alaska, far from the coastline where other tracks have been found, said Anthony Fiorillo, curator of earth sciences at the Dallas Museum of Natural History....
Editorial: Negotiation may resolve CBM impasse The stakes in the coalbed methane development litigation have come into sharper focus this summer with a series of court rulings. Several lawsuits have challenged the development of natural gas wells in the coal seams of Montana's Powder River Basin. Federal courts have decided that the Bureau of Land Management didn't comply with federal law in preparing the environmental impact statement needed before full-field development can commence and that some wells now in production under that EIS must be shut down. The Bush administration's push to open federal lands to oil and gas development seems to have collided with the provisions of the National Environmental Protection Act. What's at stake is millions of dollars invested by energy companies and millions of dollars in royalties and revenues for county, state and federal governments. On the other side of the battle, ranchers, irrigating farmers and other area residents contend that proposed development threatens the quality and quantity of underground and surface water sources they depend on for their homes and livelihoods....
A bit of black cowboy history comes to East Bay with rodeo For 21 years, the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo has celebrated the contributions of African Americans in the development of the American frontier in general and rodeos in particular. The ridin' and ropin' "Salute to Black Cowboys and Cowgirls," named after the creator of bulldogging — the forerunner of modern steer wrestling — began in Denver, soon adding the Rowell Ranch Rodeo Arena in Hayward to its list of competitive stops. Now the 10-city nationwide rodeo tour returns to the Rowell rodeo arena Saturday and Sunday. Pickett, billed as the "Dusky Demon" on Wild West show fliers and on rodeo circuit advertisements, died in 1932 at the age of 62. In 1971, he was the first African-American cowboy to be inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City. The following year, he was named to the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs, Colo....
Team ropers enjoy a crackling Fourth The weather is getting hot, and so are team ropers Clay Tryan and Patrick Smith. Hotter than a Fourth of July firecracker, you could say. The two Midland cowboys first teamed up at the beginning of the year but have performed like they have been together forever. Their most recent accomplishment came Monday when they wrapped up their Cowboy Christmas (a.k.a the lucrative Fourth of July weekend) by winning the Greeley (Colo.) Independence Day Stampede. A 5.6-second run in the Wrangler ProRodeo Tour round sealed the title for the sport's hottest tandem, which won the Bob Feist Invitational and Pace Picante ProRodeo Chute-out during the past 30 days. Their aggregate victory in Greeley (18.1 seconds on three head) earned each $4,051 and elevated them to the top spots in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association standings. Tryan, the header, and Smith, the heeler, have won $54,072 each this season....
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Thursday, July 07, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Groups appeal Green Mountain grazing plan Four conservation groups have banded together to appeal a grazing plan developed by the Bureau of Land Management for the Green Mountain Common Allotment (GMCA), the largest unfenced BLM allotment in the country. The conservation groups n- National Wildlife Federation, Western Watersheds Project, Wyoming Wildlife Federation and Wyoming Outdoor Council -n charge that the BLM has not enforced the terms of the 1999 grazing plan, allowing rancher permittees to overgraze and damage riparian areas in the 525,000 acre commons between the Sweetwater River, the Red Desert, Jeffrey City and Baroil. The groups are asking an administrative judge to allow them wide access to BLM records to pursue their appeal. Meanwhile, some members of the Fremont County ranching community feel that this BLM plan was deliberately designed to fail, because it wasn't flexible enough to accommodate a severe drought, control overgrazing by wild horses, or allow limited fencing. Conservation groups have adamantly opposed fencing since it could interrupt vital wildlife migration routes....
National Environmental Policy Act Is 'at a Crossroads' After the National Environmental Policy Act was adopted 35 years ago, the law led to a major design change in one of the nation's most ambitious energy projects — the 800-mile pipeline that carries oil from Alaska's North Slope. As a result of the often contentious ecological review, most of the pipeline was laid above ground so it would not damage the fragile permafrost, and built in a way that would not block the movement of caribou herds. Now, however, NEPA is facing strong challenges from the Bush administration, Congress and business interests who say the law has been holding up progress on a number of fronts, among them building highways, preventing forest fires and drilling for oil and gas in the Rocky Mountains. The House version of the pending energy bill would exempt many oil and gas exploration projects from NEPA review. And a congressional committee is holding public hearings with the stated intention of changing how the law works. To expedite a wide range of projects, the administration and lawmakers have exempted some categories of federal actions from NEPA assessments or limited their scope. The federal government takes an estimated 50,000 actions each year — including building campgrounds in national forests and plotting the routes of superhighways. And, to varying degrees, every one of those actions involving federal land, funds and permits is subject to scrutiny under NEPA....
Court may intervene in wild pig killings Opponents of an effort to rid Santa Cruz Island of feral pigs have filed a federal lawsuit to stop the killing and have a declaration from a former park superintendent who claims the decision to eradicate the animals was made before an environmental plan was developed. The lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court accuses the National Park Service and The Nature Conservancy, which co- own the island, of violating federal and state laws. The plaintiffs have asked a judge to issue a temporary restraining order or a permanent injunction to ban the slaughter. A decision could be issued this week....
Wyoming's guv calls wolf ideas 'logical' Wyoming's governor said Wednesday it's "logical" that the federal government be required to respond sooner when wolves cause problems and that ranchers have more freedom to kill those harassing livestock. Late last week, the state submitted a petition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asking that rules be loosened to allow harassing or killing of wolves that are a threat to livestock, wild game herds or people. "It seems so logical that I assume the federal government will reject it," Gov. Dave Freudenthal said Wednesday. "But I'm hopeful."....
Small Steps for Preservation America's wilderness movement has had a lot of the wind knocked out of its sails lately. But in Arizona, grassroots groups and Rep. Raúl Grijalva are making headway with a small-scale proposal: wilderness designation for 84,000 acres of the Tumacacori Highlands in Southern Arizona, 7,500 of them tacked onto the existing Pajarita Wilderness. "We want to make this a model for how to operate in the future," says Don Hoffman, executive director of the Arizona Wilderness Coalition, "looking at small, individual opportunities rather than huge, statewide bills." Grijalva, the Democratic freshman congressman of Arizona's 7th District, proposed the Tumacacori Wilderness in January; it would be the state's first new wilderness area in nearly 15 years....
Group seeks to expand Black Hills forest The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is working on a land deal that would add a 2,400-acre ranch to the Black Hills National Forest. The Lady C Ranch - which borders Wind Cave National Park near Hot Springs - is owned by Bill Whitlow, an entrepreneur from Virginia who has used the land for 10 years as a private getaway and now wants to sell it. To speed the process, the elk foundation has proposed buying the property a piece at a time, then selling it to the U.S. Forest Service as money is authorized in the federal budget. The price for the acreage is estimated to be $7 million to $7.5 million. By acting as an intermediary, the conservation group can purchase the property and resell it to the Forest Service faster than the federal government could acquire the property directly, said Larry Baesler, who operates the elk foundation's office in Rapid City....
Forest Service withheld reports The U.S. Forest Service failed to release essential information for the public to comment on regarding four proposed logging projects on the Shasta-Trinity and Lassen national forests, a federal judge has ruled. The decision, which orders the agency to undertake new environmental reviews, means planned logging on some 20,000 acres is on hold. When the projects first were announced, the forests sent brief letters to interested citizens or groups asking for comments, wrote U.S. District Judge David F. Levi. But those two- to three-page letters ignored key issues that later would be explained in environmental assessments, he wrote. And those assessments were released only after final decisions had been made to go ahead with the logging....
Is slithery story line just simply snaky sham? Mexican vipers with flesh-eating venom are hitching rides to Colorado in trucks of drilling pipe bound for the Four Corners region. Or not. That's the rumor flying around the San Juan River basin, where drilling companies are tapping rich methane deposits. It all started when a safety manager for BP America Production Co. warned workers to watch for the viper, the Mexican cantil, when unloading pipe. By early June, the U.S. Forest Service had also advised its employees to be on the lookout for the snake. Reports of the viper threat have also bounced around the Colorado Division of Wildlife. So far, there are no confirmed Colorado reports of the cantil, a deadlier cousin of the eastern cottonmouth....
Environmental activist Tre Arrow unlikely to return to Oregon anytime soon to face charges Don't expect environmental activist Tre Arrow back in Oregon anytime soon to face arson charges. A three-day hearing on Arrow's extradition from British Columbia to Oregon wrapped up last week, and a Canadian provincial judge is likely to make her recommendation in the matter Thursday, July 7. Arrow was arrested 15 months ago in Victoria on charges of shoplifting bolt cutters. The FBI wants him back in Oregon to stand trial in connection with a pair of arsons four years ago that caused $260,000 in damage to logging and cement trucks. Arrow insists he's innocent. Whatever B.C. Supreme Court Justice Kirsti Gill decides, here are the reasons Arrow will likely remain in a Canadian jail for some time....
Local mill has to leave timber on the ground in wake of lawsuit A lawsuit filed by two environmental groups to stop salvage logging in grizzly bear habitat could have serious implications for at least one local mill. F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber was nearly done felling all the trees on one of its salvage sales - known as the Blackfoot North Sale. The sale, located up the west side of the Hungry Horse Reservoir was within about two days of being completely harvested, said Stoltze general manager Ron Buentemeier. Right now, Stoltze has about 1 million board feet of timber on the ground that can't be picked up because of a federal court ruling issued last week that, at least temporarily, halted salvage timber harvest in areas considered core grizzly bear habitat....
Editorial: Give simpler forest rules a chance If any national forest needed to make use of a new rulebook for developing long-range forest plans, it is the Flathead National Forest. The history of the Flathead's current forest plan, adopted in 1985, is a textbook example of all the reasons to support the new forest planning regulations approved in January. We will concede right up front that the new regulations are an experiment and there is no telling how well they will work. We can't be certain that they'll lead to better management of national forest lands, and we can't be sure whether they will put the Forest Service in a more legally defensible situation. But we can say with confidence that there needed to be a change -- any change -- in the way forest plans are developed and the way they are modified and implemented....
Sue or go around? BLM looks at options Beyond Norma Tapia's locked gate in Klondyke lie thousands of acres of public land - land the Bureau of Land Management is prepared to take desperate measure to access. "Everyone in the community has interest in accessing the land," Bill Brandau, acting field manager for the Safford BLM office, said. "It's land we commonly had access to." Private residents of the Klondyke area are filing a class action lawsuit to force Tapia to open her gate. In the meantime, the BLM is considering filing a lawsuit of its own. The BLM has two options in the matter, Brandau said. It can either sue Tapia or build a second road to the canyon that skirts Tapia's property....
2 grizzlies trapped near Cody Two adult grizzly bears were trapped in the Upper Green River drainage and relocated this week to the Upper Sunlight Creek drainage near Cody. Both bears had killed domestic livestock in the Upper Green River area and were moved to grizzly habitat within the primary conservation area. Wyoming Game and Fish Department in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service killed an adult female last week after it killed a domestic calf. An adult male was captured Sunday at the site of another domestic livestock kill....
Warming Arctic puts polar bears on thin ice Polar bears are facing slow elimination over the next century as their vast frozen habitat melts away, according to a report by a panel of the world's top authorities on the subject. If warming of the Arctic continues to erode sea ice, as predicted by many climate scientists, the panel said, the iconic white carnivores will be driven ashore or onto increasingly smaller floes in their endless feast-or-famine hunt for seals. Many animals will then sicken and starve. Whole polar bear populations will die. The 40 members of the polar bear specialist group of the World Conservation Union are warning that the population of the Arctic's top predator could deplete by 30 percent during the next 35 to 50 years and should now be rated as vulnerable on an international "red list" of threatened species....
Jackson couple walks into den of wolves Allen Hicks was excited when he saw the wolf pups. But his day was about to get a lot more exciting. Hicks and Pegg Olson, both of Jackson, were hiking with Olson's dog in the Bridger-Teton National Forest on Monday when they walked into a pack of wolves. "My first instinct was like, 'Cool. Wolf pups,"' Hicks said. But it wasn't long before an aggressive male -- chomping, snarling and lunging -- chased the interlopers from the area while Hicks swung a large pole he'd found on the ground to keep the animal at bay. Hicks said even after the mother wolf left with the pups, "he would not back off. It was like he was hunting us." "I couldn't believe that every time I turned around that wolf was right there. It was unreal. Really scary," Olson said....
Property rights bill picks up steam Private property advocates pleaded with the Legislature on Tuesday to pass a bill that would prohibit government from taking property from one person and giving it to another owner for private development. State Rep. Frank Corte, R-San Antonio, filed the bill last week in response to a June 23 decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the city of New London, Conn., was allowed to take private land and give it to another private land owner in the name of economic development. The court also ruled that states could pass laws to disallow such actions, which is what Corte said he intends to do with his bill, he told the House Committee on Land and Resource Management. The bill has support from Republicans and Democrats, property-rights advocates, Libertarians and ranchers. The committee passed the bill to the full House....
Anthrax found on two West Texas ranches Two Sutton County ranches are under quarantine after the discovery of anthrax in several head of cattle, horses and deer, state authorities said today. Pascual Hernandez, an agent with the Texas Cooperative Extension Service in Sonora, said several other ranches have reported livestock and deer deaths and are being investigated. The ranches where the anthrax has been found will be under quarantine until veterinarians can determine that no other animals are infected, a process that could take six months to complete. Sonora veterinarian Mike Keller said in a story in Thursday's San Angelo Standard-Times that no infected animals are known to have entered the human food supply because the animals were found dead and no animals have left those ranches recently....
Self-taught artist combines farming, woodworking When rancher Rich Charlson earned a bachelor's degree in animal science at Montana State University in 1974, he never dreamed of becoming a talented artist who would earn thousands of dollars for his intricate wood creations. Today, Charlson and his wife, Vivian, grow several crops, including barley and spring wheat. Charlson, a graduate ferrier, also breeds quarter horses on the Charlson Ranch. Perhaps the most interesting thing born on the ranch, however, is Charliwood, an art business the couple began developing in 1985. It was not so much a love of art that led Charlson to develop his workshop. Charliwood was bred of necessity — farming simply wasn't paying the bills....
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Groups appeal Green Mountain grazing plan Four conservation groups have banded together to appeal a grazing plan developed by the Bureau of Land Management for the Green Mountain Common Allotment (GMCA), the largest unfenced BLM allotment in the country. The conservation groups n- National Wildlife Federation, Western Watersheds Project, Wyoming Wildlife Federation and Wyoming Outdoor Council -n charge that the BLM has not enforced the terms of the 1999 grazing plan, allowing rancher permittees to overgraze and damage riparian areas in the 525,000 acre commons between the Sweetwater River, the Red Desert, Jeffrey City and Baroil. The groups are asking an administrative judge to allow them wide access to BLM records to pursue their appeal. Meanwhile, some members of the Fremont County ranching community feel that this BLM plan was deliberately designed to fail, because it wasn't flexible enough to accommodate a severe drought, control overgrazing by wild horses, or allow limited fencing. Conservation groups have adamantly opposed fencing since it could interrupt vital wildlife migration routes....
National Environmental Policy Act Is 'at a Crossroads' After the National Environmental Policy Act was adopted 35 years ago, the law led to a major design change in one of the nation's most ambitious energy projects — the 800-mile pipeline that carries oil from Alaska's North Slope. As a result of the often contentious ecological review, most of the pipeline was laid above ground so it would not damage the fragile permafrost, and built in a way that would not block the movement of caribou herds. Now, however, NEPA is facing strong challenges from the Bush administration, Congress and business interests who say the law has been holding up progress on a number of fronts, among them building highways, preventing forest fires and drilling for oil and gas in the Rocky Mountains. The House version of the pending energy bill would exempt many oil and gas exploration projects from NEPA review. And a congressional committee is holding public hearings with the stated intention of changing how the law works. To expedite a wide range of projects, the administration and lawmakers have exempted some categories of federal actions from NEPA assessments or limited their scope. The federal government takes an estimated 50,000 actions each year — including building campgrounds in national forests and plotting the routes of superhighways. And, to varying degrees, every one of those actions involving federal land, funds and permits is subject to scrutiny under NEPA....
Court may intervene in wild pig killings Opponents of an effort to rid Santa Cruz Island of feral pigs have filed a federal lawsuit to stop the killing and have a declaration from a former park superintendent who claims the decision to eradicate the animals was made before an environmental plan was developed. The lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court accuses the National Park Service and The Nature Conservancy, which co- own the island, of violating federal and state laws. The plaintiffs have asked a judge to issue a temporary restraining order or a permanent injunction to ban the slaughter. A decision could be issued this week....
Wyoming's guv calls wolf ideas 'logical' Wyoming's governor said Wednesday it's "logical" that the federal government be required to respond sooner when wolves cause problems and that ranchers have more freedom to kill those harassing livestock. Late last week, the state submitted a petition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asking that rules be loosened to allow harassing or killing of wolves that are a threat to livestock, wild game herds or people. "It seems so logical that I assume the federal government will reject it," Gov. Dave Freudenthal said Wednesday. "But I'm hopeful."....
Small Steps for Preservation America's wilderness movement has had a lot of the wind knocked out of its sails lately. But in Arizona, grassroots groups and Rep. Raúl Grijalva are making headway with a small-scale proposal: wilderness designation for 84,000 acres of the Tumacacori Highlands in Southern Arizona, 7,500 of them tacked onto the existing Pajarita Wilderness. "We want to make this a model for how to operate in the future," says Don Hoffman, executive director of the Arizona Wilderness Coalition, "looking at small, individual opportunities rather than huge, statewide bills." Grijalva, the Democratic freshman congressman of Arizona's 7th District, proposed the Tumacacori Wilderness in January; it would be the state's first new wilderness area in nearly 15 years....
Group seeks to expand Black Hills forest The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is working on a land deal that would add a 2,400-acre ranch to the Black Hills National Forest. The Lady C Ranch - which borders Wind Cave National Park near Hot Springs - is owned by Bill Whitlow, an entrepreneur from Virginia who has used the land for 10 years as a private getaway and now wants to sell it. To speed the process, the elk foundation has proposed buying the property a piece at a time, then selling it to the U.S. Forest Service as money is authorized in the federal budget. The price for the acreage is estimated to be $7 million to $7.5 million. By acting as an intermediary, the conservation group can purchase the property and resell it to the Forest Service faster than the federal government could acquire the property directly, said Larry Baesler, who operates the elk foundation's office in Rapid City....
Forest Service withheld reports The U.S. Forest Service failed to release essential information for the public to comment on regarding four proposed logging projects on the Shasta-Trinity and Lassen national forests, a federal judge has ruled. The decision, which orders the agency to undertake new environmental reviews, means planned logging on some 20,000 acres is on hold. When the projects first were announced, the forests sent brief letters to interested citizens or groups asking for comments, wrote U.S. District Judge David F. Levi. But those two- to three-page letters ignored key issues that later would be explained in environmental assessments, he wrote. And those assessments were released only after final decisions had been made to go ahead with the logging....
Is slithery story line just simply snaky sham? Mexican vipers with flesh-eating venom are hitching rides to Colorado in trucks of drilling pipe bound for the Four Corners region. Or not. That's the rumor flying around the San Juan River basin, where drilling companies are tapping rich methane deposits. It all started when a safety manager for BP America Production Co. warned workers to watch for the viper, the Mexican cantil, when unloading pipe. By early June, the U.S. Forest Service had also advised its employees to be on the lookout for the snake. Reports of the viper threat have also bounced around the Colorado Division of Wildlife. So far, there are no confirmed Colorado reports of the cantil, a deadlier cousin of the eastern cottonmouth....
Environmental activist Tre Arrow unlikely to return to Oregon anytime soon to face charges Don't expect environmental activist Tre Arrow back in Oregon anytime soon to face arson charges. A three-day hearing on Arrow's extradition from British Columbia to Oregon wrapped up last week, and a Canadian provincial judge is likely to make her recommendation in the matter Thursday, July 7. Arrow was arrested 15 months ago in Victoria on charges of shoplifting bolt cutters. The FBI wants him back in Oregon to stand trial in connection with a pair of arsons four years ago that caused $260,000 in damage to logging and cement trucks. Arrow insists he's innocent. Whatever B.C. Supreme Court Justice Kirsti Gill decides, here are the reasons Arrow will likely remain in a Canadian jail for some time....
Local mill has to leave timber on the ground in wake of lawsuit A lawsuit filed by two environmental groups to stop salvage logging in grizzly bear habitat could have serious implications for at least one local mill. F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber was nearly done felling all the trees on one of its salvage sales - known as the Blackfoot North Sale. The sale, located up the west side of the Hungry Horse Reservoir was within about two days of being completely harvested, said Stoltze general manager Ron Buentemeier. Right now, Stoltze has about 1 million board feet of timber on the ground that can't be picked up because of a federal court ruling issued last week that, at least temporarily, halted salvage timber harvest in areas considered core grizzly bear habitat....
Editorial: Give simpler forest rules a chance If any national forest needed to make use of a new rulebook for developing long-range forest plans, it is the Flathead National Forest. The history of the Flathead's current forest plan, adopted in 1985, is a textbook example of all the reasons to support the new forest planning regulations approved in January. We will concede right up front that the new regulations are an experiment and there is no telling how well they will work. We can't be certain that they'll lead to better management of national forest lands, and we can't be sure whether they will put the Forest Service in a more legally defensible situation. But we can say with confidence that there needed to be a change -- any change -- in the way forest plans are developed and the way they are modified and implemented....
Sue or go around? BLM looks at options Beyond Norma Tapia's locked gate in Klondyke lie thousands of acres of public land - land the Bureau of Land Management is prepared to take desperate measure to access. "Everyone in the community has interest in accessing the land," Bill Brandau, acting field manager for the Safford BLM office, said. "It's land we commonly had access to." Private residents of the Klondyke area are filing a class action lawsuit to force Tapia to open her gate. In the meantime, the BLM is considering filing a lawsuit of its own. The BLM has two options in the matter, Brandau said. It can either sue Tapia or build a second road to the canyon that skirts Tapia's property....
2 grizzlies trapped near Cody Two adult grizzly bears were trapped in the Upper Green River drainage and relocated this week to the Upper Sunlight Creek drainage near Cody. Both bears had killed domestic livestock in the Upper Green River area and were moved to grizzly habitat within the primary conservation area. Wyoming Game and Fish Department in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service killed an adult female last week after it killed a domestic calf. An adult male was captured Sunday at the site of another domestic livestock kill....
Warming Arctic puts polar bears on thin ice Polar bears are facing slow elimination over the next century as their vast frozen habitat melts away, according to a report by a panel of the world's top authorities on the subject. If warming of the Arctic continues to erode sea ice, as predicted by many climate scientists, the panel said, the iconic white carnivores will be driven ashore or onto increasingly smaller floes in their endless feast-or-famine hunt for seals. Many animals will then sicken and starve. Whole polar bear populations will die. The 40 members of the polar bear specialist group of the World Conservation Union are warning that the population of the Arctic's top predator could deplete by 30 percent during the next 35 to 50 years and should now be rated as vulnerable on an international "red list" of threatened species....
Jackson couple walks into den of wolves Allen Hicks was excited when he saw the wolf pups. But his day was about to get a lot more exciting. Hicks and Pegg Olson, both of Jackson, were hiking with Olson's dog in the Bridger-Teton National Forest on Monday when they walked into a pack of wolves. "My first instinct was like, 'Cool. Wolf pups,"' Hicks said. But it wasn't long before an aggressive male -- chomping, snarling and lunging -- chased the interlopers from the area while Hicks swung a large pole he'd found on the ground to keep the animal at bay. Hicks said even after the mother wolf left with the pups, "he would not back off. It was like he was hunting us." "I couldn't believe that every time I turned around that wolf was right there. It was unreal. Really scary," Olson said....
Property rights bill picks up steam Private property advocates pleaded with the Legislature on Tuesday to pass a bill that would prohibit government from taking property from one person and giving it to another owner for private development. State Rep. Frank Corte, R-San Antonio, filed the bill last week in response to a June 23 decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the city of New London, Conn., was allowed to take private land and give it to another private land owner in the name of economic development. The court also ruled that states could pass laws to disallow such actions, which is what Corte said he intends to do with his bill, he told the House Committee on Land and Resource Management. The bill has support from Republicans and Democrats, property-rights advocates, Libertarians and ranchers. The committee passed the bill to the full House....
Anthrax found on two West Texas ranches Two Sutton County ranches are under quarantine after the discovery of anthrax in several head of cattle, horses and deer, state authorities said today. Pascual Hernandez, an agent with the Texas Cooperative Extension Service in Sonora, said several other ranches have reported livestock and deer deaths and are being investigated. The ranches where the anthrax has been found will be under quarantine until veterinarians can determine that no other animals are infected, a process that could take six months to complete. Sonora veterinarian Mike Keller said in a story in Thursday's San Angelo Standard-Times that no infected animals are known to have entered the human food supply because the animals were found dead and no animals have left those ranches recently....
Self-taught artist combines farming, woodworking When rancher Rich Charlson earned a bachelor's degree in animal science at Montana State University in 1974, he never dreamed of becoming a talented artist who would earn thousands of dollars for his intricate wood creations. Today, Charlson and his wife, Vivian, grow several crops, including barley and spring wheat. Charlson, a graduate ferrier, also breeds quarter horses on the Charlson Ranch. Perhaps the most interesting thing born on the ranch, however, is Charliwood, an art business the couple began developing in 1985. It was not so much a love of art that led Charlson to develop his workshop. Charliwood was bred of necessity — farming simply wasn't paying the bills....
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Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Ranchers: the endangered species
Compare for just a moment the differences in the participants in the latest round of public meetings on wolf-reintroduction in New Mexico. A recent meeting in Reserve was attended by families with children. They were very much like everyday Albuquerque families, only they are out on the range. Ranchers are small-business men and women, who lose their livelihoods with every calf or cow killed by a wolf. They deal with death and disaster every day in their herds. They also deal with tremendous stress. The venomous hatred expressed towards them at some of the more-urban meetings on the wolf is a shock. Ranchers' herds are their restaurants, flower shops and construction companies, providing futures for their families and homes for their children. No one would expect a business to tolerate a robbery every night or police who do nothing to stop it. Businesses have the right to protect their interests and their property. Regarding wolf attacks, ranchers have to prove they are being harmed first, then beg and persuade a doubting and slow-acting agency to help them, when it is not in the agency's best interest. They must then deal with the environmental movement and what it means to make extremist wolf-supporters mad. No one would expect an Albuquerque businessman or family to tolerate this kind of political pressure....
A good one by Laura Schneberger
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Compare for just a moment the differences in the participants in the latest round of public meetings on wolf-reintroduction in New Mexico. A recent meeting in Reserve was attended by families with children. They were very much like everyday Albuquerque families, only they are out on the range. Ranchers are small-business men and women, who lose their livelihoods with every calf or cow killed by a wolf. They deal with death and disaster every day in their herds. They also deal with tremendous stress. The venomous hatred expressed towards them at some of the more-urban meetings on the wolf is a shock. Ranchers' herds are their restaurants, flower shops and construction companies, providing futures for their families and homes for their children. No one would expect a business to tolerate a robbery every night or police who do nothing to stop it. Businesses have the right to protect their interests and their property. Regarding wolf attacks, ranchers have to prove they are being harmed first, then beg and persuade a doubting and slow-acting agency to help them, when it is not in the agency's best interest. They must then deal with the environmental movement and what it means to make extremist wolf-supporters mad. No one would expect an Albuquerque businessman or family to tolerate this kind of political pressure....
A good one by Laura Schneberger
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Paper Says Edible Meat Can be Grown in a Lab on Industrial Scale
Experiments for NASA space missions have shown that small amounts of edible meat can be created in a lab. But the technology that could grow chicken nuggets without the chicken, on a large scale, may not be just a science fiction fantasy. In a paper in the June 29 issue of Tissue Engineering, a team of scientists, including University of Maryland doctoral student Jason Matheny, propose two new techniques of tissue engineering that may one day lead to affordable production of in vitro - lab grown -- meat for human consumption. It is the first peer-reviewed discussion of the prospects for industrial production of cultured meat. "There would be a lot of benefits from cultured meat," says Matheny, who studies agricultural economics and public health. "For one thing, you could control the nutrients. For example, most meats are high in the fatty acid Omega 6, which can cause high cholesterol and other health problems. With in vitro meat, you could replace that with Omega 3, which is a healthy fat. "Cultured meat could also reduce the pollution that results from raising livestock, and you wouldn't need the drugs that are used on animals raised for meat." The idea of culturing meat is to create an edible product that tastes like cuts of beef, poultry, pork, lamb or fish and has the nutrients and texture of meat....
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Experiments for NASA space missions have shown that small amounts of edible meat can be created in a lab. But the technology that could grow chicken nuggets without the chicken, on a large scale, may not be just a science fiction fantasy. In a paper in the June 29 issue of Tissue Engineering, a team of scientists, including University of Maryland doctoral student Jason Matheny, propose two new techniques of tissue engineering that may one day lead to affordable production of in vitro - lab grown -- meat for human consumption. It is the first peer-reviewed discussion of the prospects for industrial production of cultured meat. "There would be a lot of benefits from cultured meat," says Matheny, who studies agricultural economics and public health. "For one thing, you could control the nutrients. For example, most meats are high in the fatty acid Omega 6, which can cause high cholesterol and other health problems. With in vitro meat, you could replace that with Omega 3, which is a healthy fat. "Cultured meat could also reduce the pollution that results from raising livestock, and you wouldn't need the drugs that are used on animals raised for meat." The idea of culturing meat is to create an edible product that tastes like cuts of beef, poultry, pork, lamb or fish and has the nutrients and texture of meat....
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NEWS ROUNDUP
Feds promise 'honest look' at wolf petition A federal wolf official said he is looking forward to seeing a Wyoming petition to remove wolves from Endangered Species Act protection, and promised to "give it an honest look." Ed Bangs, Rocky Mountain area wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, made his comments after the Wyoming Game and Fish Department last week announced -- along with other state officials -- its intention to submit its own petition for delisting. Bangs said anyone can petition to delist a species, though it is usually the Fish and Wildlife Service doing that. Although it is rare for another entity to successfully file for delisting, there have been a handful of cases....
Book details how ranchers protect wildlife habitat, way of life Rural ranches with majestic scenery and wildlife habitats are vanishing as the West grows at an exponential rate. With current economic forces proving uncontrollable for ranch owners, many feel pressured to subdivide and sell their land. “But ranchers don’t have to sell their land,” said Jack Wright, head of geography at New Mexico State University and president of the New Mexico Land Conservancy. In his latest book, “Saving the Ranch: Conservation Easement Design in the American West,” Wright and Albuquerque architect Anthony Anella outline the process of saving land by donating a conservation easement that can mix limited development with land protection. He said this is the first book that focuses on helping landowners understand the legal process of donating easements. A conservation easement is an agreement between a landowner and a not-for-profit land conservation organization or agriculture organization that permanently protects the natural wildlife habitat and landscape of a property by limiting how the land is used in the future....
Column: Fidelity Exploration fails good neighbor test In rural Montana, we "neighbor." When someone down the road is branding, you help out. You look out for your neighbors because their interests are your own. You do what it takes to make your community a better place to live, work and raise a family. We live in a community that neighbors Stillwater Mining Co.'s East Boulder Mine. The mine is one of the most responsible in the country thanks to the "neighboring" created by the Good Neighbor Agreement between SMC, Northern Plains Resource Council and its affiliates, Stillwater Protective Association and Cottonwood Resource Council. As negotiators of the Good Neighbor Agreement and longtime members of Northern Plains, we read with interest the commentary by Mike Caskey of Fidelity Exploration and Production Co. (June 21 guest opinion) lamenting the "unreasonable" standards for methane extraction called for by Northern Plains. According to Caskey, the bar is too high for the industry to reach. Fidelity could learn a thing or two from Stillwater and its officers. Stillwater stepped up to the plate and partnered with us to hammer out an agreement that protects our community while encouraging responsible development. The agreement goes beyond state and federal requirements and encourages creative problem solving to protect our water and communities....
Greens sue to protect rare wildflower The Deseret milkvetch grows only one place on the planet - on fewer than 300 acres between the towns of Thistle and Birdseye at the southern end of Utah County. Fearing future road expansion and urban sprawl will threaten the native wildflower's tiny range, a pair of environmental groups filed a lawsuit Tuesday to force the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to craft a recovery plan for the species. "The Deseret milkvetch was thought to be extinct for a long time. It was seen for the last time in 1909, then not again until 1981," said Erin Robertson, a biologist with the Colorado-based Center for Native Ecosystems. "It's come back from the brink once and we want to ensure that the Fish and Wildlife Service meets its obligations."....
That Tree Stood for So Much Jason Wilson was just 21 when a Lakota elder gave him a spirit name. Three years later, on a September day in 1998, the bearded redhead from Missouri lay in a fetal curl on the floor of a Humboldt County forest, rocking and sobbing in the duff. Next to him was 24-year-old David Nathan "Gypsy" Chain, his head cracked open by the blow of a tree felled by an enraged logger. Chain had inspired Wilson to disrupt old-growth logging on private land. It was Wilson's first act of civil disobedience. Now, Chain was dead. The legacy of that death, Wilson soon decided, was the weight the Lakota elder had warned of. He vowed to carry it with honor. From that day on, "Shunka" would be his forest name, joining the list of adopted monikers that give Humboldt's logging protesters a blend of anonymity and fairy tale folly. Shunka's long struggle to redress Chain's death would depend, more than anything, on a 700-year-old tree the protesters had named Aradia....
Grizzly bear kills couple in tent Two people camping along the Hulahula River in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge have been killed by a grizzly bear. Alaskan officials discovered the bodies and an unused firearm in a tent on Saturday at a campsite near the river. They also shot and killed the animal. The couple, whose names were not released, was believed to be in their late 50s or early 60s, North Slope Borough police said. They were from Anchorage and had been on a recreational rafting trip down the river, Alaska State Troopers said yesterday. The victims were in their tent when the attack occurred, according to Tim DeSpain, spokesman for Alaska State Troopers. The campsite was clean, with food stored in bear-proof containers. "The initial scene indicates that it was a predatory act by the bear," DeSpain said....
Feds try new royalty program The federal government is trying a novel approach to collect royalties from oil and natural gas companies that drill wells on federal lands. Under the royalty-in-kind program launched last year, energy companies can simply hand over a portion of the oil or gas produced to the U.S. Department of Interior. Currently, producers estimate the value of the oil and gas they've pumped and then pay royalties - a system that has exposed some of them to lawsuits charging they've undervalued their royalty payments. The department sells the commodity to intermediate buyers. Then it splits the proceeds with the producing states when production is located onshore or in state waters, typically 3 miles from the shore. In most states, the royalty money goes toward school districts and local governments....
Oil shale development will needs vast chunks of land Squeezing oil from oil shale will take up large chunks of land and pose some environmental hurdles, said a Utah congressman who is watching the resource closely. “It’s got to be a huge operation,” Rep. Chris Cannon, a Republican from Provo, said of drawing oil from the oil shale of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. The Department of Interior is contemplating 160-acre research and development leases of oil-shale lands, an amount of land that’s far too small to provide a lot of information, said Cannon. It will take about a ton of shale to produce a barrel of oil, Cannon said, posing the question about what is done with the rock left over after the oil has been removed....
Column: Private Property in Peril Property owners beware. If an owner does not make maximum productive use of his property, government is now empowered to transfer the property to another person. This is the essence of the Supreme Court’s ruling last week in Kelo v. City of New London (No. 04-108). The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution only permits government to take property for “public use” upon paying “just compensation” to the owner. Via the Kelo decision, the Court has deleted the words “public use” from the Bill of Rights and made property ownership less secure. In the years after ratification of the Bill of Rights, Supreme Court justices viewed the preservation of property as a primary object of American law. Justice William Paterson in Vanhorne’s Lessee v. Dorrance (1795) averred, “the right of acquiring and possessing private property, and having it protected, is one of the natural, inherent and inalienable rights of man.” Justice Samuel Chase declared in Calder v. Bull (1798) that an act taking property from A and giving it to B “is against all reason and justice” and is thus prohibited by the Constitution....
Column: Supreme Court Ruling Opens the Door to Abuse As economists, we share O’Connor’s concerns for two reasons. First, economic theory tells us that secure private property rights are one of the essential foundations of a free society and an important engine of growth. By raising the odds that eminent domain powers will be exercised expansively, the Kelo decision has seriously undermined those rights. If privately owned land can be taken for any use developers and local government officials creatively can cloak in a “public purpose,” then private property plainly will be worth less. The pop you heard last week may have been the bursting of the real estate “bubble.” Second, by deferring to the expertise of New London’s public officials, as set forth in the city’s “carefully considered development plan,” the Supreme Court has opened the door wider to rent-seeking by powerful local interests. The Kelo decision supplies convenient camouflage for eminent domain actions that are little more than corporate welfare in disguise. The only pretext now needed is to claim, as New London did, that transferring property from one private party to another will serve the “public purpose” of stimulating the local economy, “creating” jobs and new sources of tax revenue....
US proposes end to cotton subsidy scheme The US on Tuesday proposed the elimination of a subsidy scheme that has paid more than $2.4bn to millers and exporters of US cotton over the past decade, saying that it intends to comply with a World Trade Organisation ruling in March that favoured Brazil. The administration of President George W. Bush said it would propose to Congress the ending of a special scheme for cotton farmers known as the Step 2 programme. The WTO has said Step 2 is in violation of world trade rules, and has depressed global cotton prices, to the detriment of cotton farmers in Brazil and other developing countries. The scheme has been critical to persuading US cotton buyers to favour domestic cotton over cheaper foreign cotton, and also allows US cotton to be competitive internationally....
John Whitfield Middleton: Man of Mystery Historians have speculated endlessly, and entertainingly, about the life and disputed death of William H. Bonney, aka William Antrim, aka Henry McCarty, aka Billy the Kid. Some believe he succumbed in Old Fort Sumner, N.M., in 1881 when allegedly fired upon by Sheriff Pat Garrett in a dark room. Some believe he lived well into the 20th century under the name Brushy Bill Roberts in Hamilton in Central Texas. Brushy Bill, according to Brushy Bill, was born in 1859. According to his death certificate, he dropped dead of natural causes in 1950 at the age of 91. We have no conclusive evidence that The Kid was killed by Garrett. We weren’t there. We have no conclusive evidence that Brushy Bill Roberts was The Kid. For all we know, he may have been Bing Crosby or Bob Hope. What puzzles us is the historical neglect of another fascinating character in this mix who could have solved the entire mystery....
It's All Trew: Saving energy has always been worthwhile Saving energy is a worthwhile effort no matter the age or era. Whether for economical reasons only or just plain common sense, a significant effort in energy saving was made in the early-day oil fields of the North Fork of the Red River near Kellerville and Magic City. Though idle today and probably destined for salvage, the huge "power" source stands as a monument to ingenuity and mechanization. Some call it a power wheel, others say eccentric, but all agree it is an icon of the past. Using one power source instead of many certainly saved energy, investment costs and labor....
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Feds promise 'honest look' at wolf petition A federal wolf official said he is looking forward to seeing a Wyoming petition to remove wolves from Endangered Species Act protection, and promised to "give it an honest look." Ed Bangs, Rocky Mountain area wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, made his comments after the Wyoming Game and Fish Department last week announced -- along with other state officials -- its intention to submit its own petition for delisting. Bangs said anyone can petition to delist a species, though it is usually the Fish and Wildlife Service doing that. Although it is rare for another entity to successfully file for delisting, there have been a handful of cases....
Book details how ranchers protect wildlife habitat, way of life Rural ranches with majestic scenery and wildlife habitats are vanishing as the West grows at an exponential rate. With current economic forces proving uncontrollable for ranch owners, many feel pressured to subdivide and sell their land. “But ranchers don’t have to sell their land,” said Jack Wright, head of geography at New Mexico State University and president of the New Mexico Land Conservancy. In his latest book, “Saving the Ranch: Conservation Easement Design in the American West,” Wright and Albuquerque architect Anthony Anella outline the process of saving land by donating a conservation easement that can mix limited development with land protection. He said this is the first book that focuses on helping landowners understand the legal process of donating easements. A conservation easement is an agreement between a landowner and a not-for-profit land conservation organization or agriculture organization that permanently protects the natural wildlife habitat and landscape of a property by limiting how the land is used in the future....
Column: Fidelity Exploration fails good neighbor test In rural Montana, we "neighbor." When someone down the road is branding, you help out. You look out for your neighbors because their interests are your own. You do what it takes to make your community a better place to live, work and raise a family. We live in a community that neighbors Stillwater Mining Co.'s East Boulder Mine. The mine is one of the most responsible in the country thanks to the "neighboring" created by the Good Neighbor Agreement between SMC, Northern Plains Resource Council and its affiliates, Stillwater Protective Association and Cottonwood Resource Council. As negotiators of the Good Neighbor Agreement and longtime members of Northern Plains, we read with interest the commentary by Mike Caskey of Fidelity Exploration and Production Co. (June 21 guest opinion) lamenting the "unreasonable" standards for methane extraction called for by Northern Plains. According to Caskey, the bar is too high for the industry to reach. Fidelity could learn a thing or two from Stillwater and its officers. Stillwater stepped up to the plate and partnered with us to hammer out an agreement that protects our community while encouraging responsible development. The agreement goes beyond state and federal requirements and encourages creative problem solving to protect our water and communities....
Greens sue to protect rare wildflower The Deseret milkvetch grows only one place on the planet - on fewer than 300 acres between the towns of Thistle and Birdseye at the southern end of Utah County. Fearing future road expansion and urban sprawl will threaten the native wildflower's tiny range, a pair of environmental groups filed a lawsuit Tuesday to force the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to craft a recovery plan for the species. "The Deseret milkvetch was thought to be extinct for a long time. It was seen for the last time in 1909, then not again until 1981," said Erin Robertson, a biologist with the Colorado-based Center for Native Ecosystems. "It's come back from the brink once and we want to ensure that the Fish and Wildlife Service meets its obligations."....
That Tree Stood for So Much Jason Wilson was just 21 when a Lakota elder gave him a spirit name. Three years later, on a September day in 1998, the bearded redhead from Missouri lay in a fetal curl on the floor of a Humboldt County forest, rocking and sobbing in the duff. Next to him was 24-year-old David Nathan "Gypsy" Chain, his head cracked open by the blow of a tree felled by an enraged logger. Chain had inspired Wilson to disrupt old-growth logging on private land. It was Wilson's first act of civil disobedience. Now, Chain was dead. The legacy of that death, Wilson soon decided, was the weight the Lakota elder had warned of. He vowed to carry it with honor. From that day on, "Shunka" would be his forest name, joining the list of adopted monikers that give Humboldt's logging protesters a blend of anonymity and fairy tale folly. Shunka's long struggle to redress Chain's death would depend, more than anything, on a 700-year-old tree the protesters had named Aradia....
Grizzly bear kills couple in tent Two people camping along the Hulahula River in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge have been killed by a grizzly bear. Alaskan officials discovered the bodies and an unused firearm in a tent on Saturday at a campsite near the river. They also shot and killed the animal. The couple, whose names were not released, was believed to be in their late 50s or early 60s, North Slope Borough police said. They were from Anchorage and had been on a recreational rafting trip down the river, Alaska State Troopers said yesterday. The victims were in their tent when the attack occurred, according to Tim DeSpain, spokesman for Alaska State Troopers. The campsite was clean, with food stored in bear-proof containers. "The initial scene indicates that it was a predatory act by the bear," DeSpain said....
Feds try new royalty program The federal government is trying a novel approach to collect royalties from oil and natural gas companies that drill wells on federal lands. Under the royalty-in-kind program launched last year, energy companies can simply hand over a portion of the oil or gas produced to the U.S. Department of Interior. Currently, producers estimate the value of the oil and gas they've pumped and then pay royalties - a system that has exposed some of them to lawsuits charging they've undervalued their royalty payments. The department sells the commodity to intermediate buyers. Then it splits the proceeds with the producing states when production is located onshore or in state waters, typically 3 miles from the shore. In most states, the royalty money goes toward school districts and local governments....
Oil shale development will needs vast chunks of land Squeezing oil from oil shale will take up large chunks of land and pose some environmental hurdles, said a Utah congressman who is watching the resource closely. “It’s got to be a huge operation,” Rep. Chris Cannon, a Republican from Provo, said of drawing oil from the oil shale of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. The Department of Interior is contemplating 160-acre research and development leases of oil-shale lands, an amount of land that’s far too small to provide a lot of information, said Cannon. It will take about a ton of shale to produce a barrel of oil, Cannon said, posing the question about what is done with the rock left over after the oil has been removed....
Column: Private Property in Peril Property owners beware. If an owner does not make maximum productive use of his property, government is now empowered to transfer the property to another person. This is the essence of the Supreme Court’s ruling last week in Kelo v. City of New London (No. 04-108). The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution only permits government to take property for “public use” upon paying “just compensation” to the owner. Via the Kelo decision, the Court has deleted the words “public use” from the Bill of Rights and made property ownership less secure. In the years after ratification of the Bill of Rights, Supreme Court justices viewed the preservation of property as a primary object of American law. Justice William Paterson in Vanhorne’s Lessee v. Dorrance (1795) averred, “the right of acquiring and possessing private property, and having it protected, is one of the natural, inherent and inalienable rights of man.” Justice Samuel Chase declared in Calder v. Bull (1798) that an act taking property from A and giving it to B “is against all reason and justice” and is thus prohibited by the Constitution....
Column: Supreme Court Ruling Opens the Door to Abuse As economists, we share O’Connor’s concerns for two reasons. First, economic theory tells us that secure private property rights are one of the essential foundations of a free society and an important engine of growth. By raising the odds that eminent domain powers will be exercised expansively, the Kelo decision has seriously undermined those rights. If privately owned land can be taken for any use developers and local government officials creatively can cloak in a “public purpose,” then private property plainly will be worth less. The pop you heard last week may have been the bursting of the real estate “bubble.” Second, by deferring to the expertise of New London’s public officials, as set forth in the city’s “carefully considered development plan,” the Supreme Court has opened the door wider to rent-seeking by powerful local interests. The Kelo decision supplies convenient camouflage for eminent domain actions that are little more than corporate welfare in disguise. The only pretext now needed is to claim, as New London did, that transferring property from one private party to another will serve the “public purpose” of stimulating the local economy, “creating” jobs and new sources of tax revenue....
US proposes end to cotton subsidy scheme The US on Tuesday proposed the elimination of a subsidy scheme that has paid more than $2.4bn to millers and exporters of US cotton over the past decade, saying that it intends to comply with a World Trade Organisation ruling in March that favoured Brazil. The administration of President George W. Bush said it would propose to Congress the ending of a special scheme for cotton farmers known as the Step 2 programme. The WTO has said Step 2 is in violation of world trade rules, and has depressed global cotton prices, to the detriment of cotton farmers in Brazil and other developing countries. The scheme has been critical to persuading US cotton buyers to favour domestic cotton over cheaper foreign cotton, and also allows US cotton to be competitive internationally....
John Whitfield Middleton: Man of Mystery Historians have speculated endlessly, and entertainingly, about the life and disputed death of William H. Bonney, aka William Antrim, aka Henry McCarty, aka Billy the Kid. Some believe he succumbed in Old Fort Sumner, N.M., in 1881 when allegedly fired upon by Sheriff Pat Garrett in a dark room. Some believe he lived well into the 20th century under the name Brushy Bill Roberts in Hamilton in Central Texas. Brushy Bill, according to Brushy Bill, was born in 1859. According to his death certificate, he dropped dead of natural causes in 1950 at the age of 91. We have no conclusive evidence that The Kid was killed by Garrett. We weren’t there. We have no conclusive evidence that Brushy Bill Roberts was The Kid. For all we know, he may have been Bing Crosby or Bob Hope. What puzzles us is the historical neglect of another fascinating character in this mix who could have solved the entire mystery....
It's All Trew: Saving energy has always been worthwhile Saving energy is a worthwhile effort no matter the age or era. Whether for economical reasons only or just plain common sense, a significant effort in energy saving was made in the early-day oil fields of the North Fork of the Red River near Kellerville and Magic City. Though idle today and probably destined for salvage, the huge "power" source stands as a monument to ingenuity and mechanization. Some call it a power wheel, others say eccentric, but all agree it is an icon of the past. Using one power source instead of many certainly saved energy, investment costs and labor....
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Tuesday, July 05, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Herds, history fade from desert Tom Wetterman looked out across Hidden Valley, the pale green hills to the north and south fading into the brown of summer. Record rains made it a perfect year for cattle ranching on this High Desert ranch east of Barstow. It seemed like just one more slap in the face. "You dream about years like this," Wetterman said. "And now I'm leaving." After 30 years of ranching in the desert, the cowboy who was once the model for the Marlboro man is packing it in. Battling environmental activists and government officials over increasing restrictions on cattle grazing in the Mojave Desert has worn him down, he says. He's one of the last ranchers to leave as a nearly 150-year period of raising cattle in the western Mojave Desert comes to an end. When the Army offered to buy him out last year as part of Fort Irwin's expansion, Wetterman and his wife, Jeanne, decided it was time to go. They sold their spread for $800,000 and bought a ranch in New Mexico, where they're moving their operation, including their 200 head of cattle. The military might use the ranch house as a residence for biologists studying the desert tortoise. But everything else will be hauled away, leaving the desert to slowly return to its pre-cattle state....
Sierra Club, industry at odds over Red Desert While the Sierra Club calls Wyoming's Red Desert one of the 50 most endangered places in the United States, oil and gas industry officials say that's an overblown assessment. ''Environmentalists are relying on hysteria to achieve their goals,'' said Steve Degenfelder, vice president for lands for Double Eagle Petroleum Co. The Sierra Club's decision to put the Red Desert on its America's Great Outdoors list results from plans to drill 10,000 coal-bed methane wells, traditional gas wells, and oil wells in southwestern Wyoming. The list also includes Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, the Roan Plateau in Colorado, the Boise River in Idaho, The Great Burn Roadless Area in Montana, the Cheyenne River Valley in South Dakota and the Sand Hills in Nebraska. Besides mining and drilling, recreation and other development also threaten the sites, according to the Sierra Club's Web site. ''Each of them requires urgent and bold action,'' the site said....
GOCO under fire Four years ago, Colorado voters overwhelmingly approved the use of $115 million in bonds to preserve open-space land around the state. To date, none of that money has been spent, and critics say that is because the Great Outdoors Colorado board that oversees the spending is resisting the will of the voters. They say the board has shifted its emphasis from buying open space to paying ranchers and farmers not to sell out to developers. "They have broken faith with the voters by de-emphasizing acquisition of land," said state Sen. Dan Grossman, D-Denver. "They don't like the idea of the state holding title to land. If you're not acquiring land, there's no reason to use bonding." GOCO officials dispute Grossman's characterization. They say they have preserved thousands of acres in the past year and GOCO still will have the capacity to issue bonds in the future....
Preserves to be mapped Coloradans have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the past decade to buy up open-space land, and they may soon know exactly what they have received for all of that money. GOCO, or Great Outdoors Colorado, the state agency that spends lottery-fund proceeds on open space, has contracted with a Colorado State University laboratory to map all of the protected open space in Colorado. The project is more complicated than it might sound, since there are dozens of city and county open- space programs and nonprofit land trusts operating in the state. Some of the open space is bought outright, while other properties are protected through conservation easements that forbid the development of private ranchland. "It's a fair question to say, 'How much has been spent and what do we have for that?' " GOCO spokeswoman Chris Leding said....
Ranch could be site of 94-home subdivision A scenic Missouri Heights ranch that has historical buildings on its property is for sale, and a new owner could build as many as 94 homes on the spread. The 565-acre Hunt Ranch has a price tag of $8.75 million. It offers views of Mount Sopris and Capitol Peak, and has superior water rights, according to an advertisement in The Aspen Times. While a 94-home subdivision may seem like a lot in the somewhat secluded area above El Jebel - Marble, by way of comparison, has about 80 year-round residents - it is allowed under the Garfield County master plan, said Edward Sanditen of Carol Dopkin Real Estate. He is handling the ranch's sale....
Legislation aimed at weakening Endangered Species Act Republican congressional critics of the Endangered Species Act have drafted legislation hedging the government's obligation to take all necessary steps to bring back to robust health any species on the brink of extinction. The draft envisions more limited government obligations: ensuring that the status of an endangered plant or animal gets no worse and helping to make it better. The draft legislation, prepared by the Republican staff of the House Resources Committee, narrows the law's reach, potentially exempting many federal actions that are now subject to review. In addition, it requires the authority to list subgroups of a species of fish or wildlife as endangered be used "only sparingly." The draft would automatically take the law off the books in 2015....
Bat study taking wing Three bat lovers stand under the light of a tailgate in the darkness of the Arizona Strip, holding fuzzy specimens as closely as newborn infants in gloved hands. They turn over three bats, stretching the wings in their headlamps, looking for signs of pregnancy, age and species, measuring the forearms. More than 30 people have traveled from Tucson and the San Francisco Bay Area to wade through stagnant pools in a vacant pasture at night netting bats for a Northern Arizona University professor's study. Most are here, south of Marble Canyon, for a glimpse at one species rarely ever seen, the spotted bat. It's one of the super athletes of the mammalian world, flying up to 30 mph and 50 miles per night to feed, though it only weighs the equivalent of four Hershey's Kisses....
Cattlemen conditionally support Simpson bill The Idaho Cattle Association is reluctantly supporting the Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act currently in Congress, provided that a compensation clause is included. In its present form, the proposal includes compensation for seven ranchers on the East Fork of the Salmon River, said Lindsay Slater, aide to Simpson. They hold U.S. Forest Service grazing permits that were sharply cut back as a result of environmental lawsuits. The cuts reduced animal unit months and the time on the range by up to 50 percent on each operation. “We wanted to stabilize those ranchers, but our hands were tied by the litigation. Our first idea was to trade lands, giving them private instead of federal forest lands on which to run. There were no lands to trade. So we came up with a compensation clause,” Slater said. “It gives those ranchers the right to seek $300 per AUM.”....
Roads to an end: Outfitter’s business suffers as roadless ruling opens door for gas drilling It’s quite a haul to Jeff Mead’s little piece of heaven. The four-hour trek by horse or mule takes visitors deep into the White River National Forest about 20 miles south of Rifle. The hunters who put down substantial cash for Mead’s guided pack trips seek solitude and a successful hunt, two things the veteran outfitter has consistently delivered. Until now. The paradise the 50-year-old Grand Junction man loves to share with sportsmen every fall may be paradise lost. The lure of natural resources beneath the forests that afford Mead’s customers such prime hunting threatens his outfitting business. Mead learned three years ago the relatively untouched 39-square-mile parcel of federal woodlands he leases from the U.S. Forest Service could be opened to drilling....
Wyoming asks feds for more leeway in shooting wolves Wyoming on Friday asked federal wildlife managers to be more proactive in managing wolves by allowing ranchers to shoot problem wolves and reimbursing producers for damage caused by the predators. The petition filed with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is the latest move in an ongoing legal and bureaucratic struggle between Wyoming and the federal government over management of wolves since they were reintroduced into the Northern Rockies 10 years ago. The animals are flourishing, with an estimated population of more than 800 in the region, raising concerns from agriculture interests, landowners, outfitters and state officials of a growing threat to wildlife, livestock and domestic pets. "The Fish and Wildlife Service is responsible for wolf reintroduction, but it hasn't taken responsibility for the way that program has played out on the ground in Wyoming," Gov. Dave Freudenthal said in a release....
Activists to file appeal in forest road dispute A citizen activist group said it will pursue an appeal of a Forest Service decision concerning a remote forest road that runs along a river with threatened fish if a provision to close the last half-mile isn’t dropped. But Bob Vaught, supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, said the demand by the Shovel Brigade is out of the question. “We’re not willing to do that,” Vaught told the Elko Daily Free Press. Meanwhile, Elko County District Attorney Gary Woodbury said while the county won’t appeal the Forest Service decision over South Canyon Road, he’s prepared to take the issue of ownership to court. Elko County commissioners are scheduled to consider their options when they meet this week....
Who has a right to the roads? Counties across the country have laid claim to roadways on federal lands under a historic law passed after the Civil War to encourage settlement of the western frontier. They've also used it to foil private property owners' attempts to block access to public lands. Revised Statute 2477 is a one-sentence provision of the Lode Mining Act of 1866, whose simple language has created a hornet's nest of interpretation that is buzzing across the West. The statute was repealed in 1976 when Congress passed the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which defined rights of way across federal lands. RS 2477 granted rights of way to local governments for the construction of highways over public lands not reserved for other uses such as an Indian reservation. In essence, the statute says that if states, counties or individuals can prove a road has been in use before 1976 or before the land it crossed was reserved, it could still be claimed as a legitimate right of way. Since then, the law has pitted local governments against the feds, counties against private landowners, with environmental groups and off-road groups, among others, joining the fray....
Timber companies sue for reparations Timber companies shut out of federal forests by environmental lawsuits have found a way to use those lawsuits in their favor. They're doing it by using the same argument as the activists who filed the lawsuits: The government failed to follow laws such as the Endangered Species Act that protect wildlife. But the companies are taking the argument in a different direction: They say the government should have known better than to offer the logging contracts and thus owes them for money they lost when courts sided with the activists and stopped the cutting. Federal judges have ruled in decisive cases that the companies have a good point. It can take years of legal back-and-forth before cash is awarded. But companies are filing a lengthening list of claims -- including more than a dozen since last year for long-delayed Oregon timber sales -- that could cost taxpayers millions of dollars. The surge of claims builds on $27.3 million that the U.S. Forest Service has paid to timber companies since 1992, including $2.8 million last year, for Oregon and Washington logging projects that fell through....
Forest Service denying access to summits of Colorado peaks The U.S. Forest Service has stopped issuing access permits to hikers hoping to reach the top of four 14,000-foot peaks in Colorado because the trails cross private land. The agency this week began distributing fliers warning hikers to keep off trails to Mount Democrat, Mount Lincoln, Mount Bross and Mount Cameron in Park County unless they have permission from landowners who acquired the land through old mining claims. "The bottom line is there is no public access to those peaks," Sara Mayben, head of the Forest Service's South Park Ranger District, told The Denver Post. "We can't stop the public from trespassing, but we will take steps to make it clear that they are."....
Man gets 30 days in jail for snowmobile incident A man was sentenced to 30 days in jail for striking a U.S. Forest Service officer with his snowmobile during a February confrontation in an off-limits area at Lake Tahoe. At a hearing in El Dorado County Superior Court, Gregg Gemmet was ordered to pay full restitution for officer Ron Thompson’s injuries. Gemmet, a mechanic with the Tahoe-Douglas Fire Protection District, also was ordered to donate his snowmobile to a search and rescue team, write a letter of apology and speak to a snowmobile group. An original charge of felony aggravated assault was reduced to misdemeanor aggravated assault under an agreement, Uthe said....and Kit Laney gets five months in a Federal prison. Mr. Gemmet should be glad he wasn't riding a horse and that David Iglesias is not the US Attorney for his state....
BLM hopes to OK 1,000 new permits TheBureau of Land Management's Buffalo field office expects to approve about 1,000 more coal-bed methane drilling permits by the end of September. "We've issued 1,334 of our targeted 2,425 approvals for the year," said Richard Zander, assistant field manager with the agency's Buffalo office. The agency's permitting year runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. Zander said his office has about 1,050 permits in the approval process with 48 of those for projects on U.S. Forest Service land, which were sent to the Forest Service office in Douglas for National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) review. BLM cannot issue those permits until the Forest Service completes its NEPA review process. "We were hoping to see at least 40 of those permits back in our office by mid-May, but we haven't seen them yet," Zander said....
BLM jumps back into auctioning gas, oil leases The oil and gas leases to more than 17,000 acres that were spared the gavel in May, after local surface-rights owner complaints, are back on the block for the Bureau of Land Management's quarterly auction Aug. 11. In early May, surface-rights owners of 14 parcels in Montrose and nearby counties complained the agency's snarled Web site and poorly posted notices gave them only a week's notification, rather than the 45 days to which they were entitled. The BLM owns the mineral development rights to those properties, a situation known as "split estate." It deferred the 14 parcels from the May sale and created new notification options that include a notification registration list. Wednesday, Duane Spencer, spokesman for the BLM's state office in Lakewood, said because the notification issued had been resolved, the parcels' development rights are being offered for sale in August....
Actor Rick Schroder and his West Slope neighbors lock horns Two locks secure the thick chain that holds the steel gate closing the mountain road. The brass lock requires a combination, and the chrome lock opens with a key. The heavy gate, and the fence standing erect on either side of it, bar entry to Mesa Mood Ranch, actor Rick Schroder's New Age-sounding retreat 25 miles southwest of Grand Junction. No-trespassing signs, posted at regular intervals, warn off the uninvited. At issue in this Western Slope legal drama is access to land, which is as bitter a dispute in the New West as it was in the Old West. The conventional wisdom in the community, as sampled at Freeman's Barber Stop, is that Schroder, a Republican who belongs to the National Rifle Association, never really bonded with Grand Junction, though the two would seem a good fit. Grand Junction is a conservative community where hunting is a major element in the economy....
Editorial: U.S. Attorney should take action in road-sign dispute A request for legal action against Kane County has languished in the office of U.S. Attorney for Utah Paul Warner long enough. It's time for an accounting. Kane County officials, fighting for greater access to public lands, defied federal law in 2003 when they posted signs directing off-highway vehicles to trails that are off-limits inside the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and tore down signs that closed roads on federal lands to OHV use. Kane County Commissioner Mark Habbeshaw says he wants a court to settle the two-year dispute, and we agree that there is no other way to deal with it, as Habbeshaw and his county cohorts apparently do not intend to comply with the law. After Bureau of Land Management Director Sally Wisely ordered the county to remove its signs from federal land or face a lawsuit, Habbeshaw and the county commission removed 52 signs, but they left others in place and put up some new ones on roads the county considers easiest to defend in court. The U.S. Attorney's Office has been investigating the illegal removal of BLM signs for two years now....
Editorial: Land assault Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. portrayed himself as a moderate on issues of land use and the environment. But as governor he has solidly aligned himself with those who seek broader use of federal lands, including access via questionable "roads" into wilderness study areas. With Huntsman's assent, the state has filed five road claims under a deal struck by former Gov. Mike Leavitt and Secretary of Interior Gale Norton to broker conflicting claims to roads on federal lands. Environmental groups successfully challenged one of those claims and are questioning the others, pointing to aerial photographs, maps and historical records that would seem to indicate they, too, fail to meet the criteria. On another front, the Utah Attorney General's Office has filed suit to regain access to five roads that were closed by the Bureau of Land Management as part of a much-discussed travel plan for off-highway vehicles in the San Rafael Swell that was put in place in 2003, as well as access to two others in a congressionally established wilderness study area. The state has also joined a San Juan County lawsuit that seeks ownership of an undeveloped road, essentially a stream bed, in Canyonlands National Park. And it has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in a Mountain States Legal Foundation lawsuit aimed at shrinking the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument....
9 spooked wild horses die in Calgary ride An annual round-up of 200 wild horses went terribly wrong in Calgary, Alberta, when nine of the animals were spooked on a bridge and plunged to their deaths. As part of Trail Ride 2005, ranch hands were guiding about 200 wild horses on a six-day, 125-mile journey from the Stampede Ranch near Hanna, Alberta, to the site of the Calgary Stampede's downtown event. Stampede spokesman Lindsey Galloway said some horses became frightened as they crossed a bridge over the Bow River....
Column: Lessons From the Kelo Decision One week after the Kelo decision by the Supreme Court, Americans are still reeling from the shock of having our nation’s highest tribunal endorse using government power to condemn private homes to benefit a property developer. Even as we celebrate our independence from England this July 4th, we find ourselves increasingly enslaved by petty bureaucrats at every level of government. The anger engendered by the Kelo case certainly resonates on this holiday based on rebellion against government. Kelo has several important lessons for all of us. We are witnessing the destruction of any last remnants of the separation of powers doctrine, a doctrine our founders considered critical to freedom. The notion that the judicial branch of government serves as a watchdog to curb legislative and executive abuses has been entirely exposed as an illusion. Judges not only fail to defend our freedoms, they actively infringe upon them by acting as de facto legislators. Thus Kelo serves as a stark reminder that we cannot rely on judges to protect our freedoms. If anything, the Supreme Court should have refused to hear the Kelo case on the grounds that the 5th amendment does not apply to states. If constitutional purists hope to maintain credibility, we must reject the phony incorporation doctrine in all cases – not only when it serves our interests. The issue in the Kelo case is the legality of the eminent domain action under Connecticut law, not federal law. Congress can and should act to prevent the federal government from seizing private property, but the fight against local eminent domain actions must take place at the local level....
House Registers Strong Disapproval of Supreme Court Ruling The House of Representatives can't undo a troubling Supreme Court ruling, but it can -- and did -- send a message to the states. On Thursday, the House voted 365-33 to condemn the court's Kelo v. City of New London ruling that allows the government to take private property for "economic development." Private homes may be turned over to private commercial developers with "just compensation" -- even if homeowners object, the court said. In addition to the resolution, legislation has been introduced in both the House and Senate to limit federal funding for cities and municipalities that use eminent domain to seize property for economic development. House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-Wis.) introduced the House bill, and he said he expects the House Judiciary Committee to consider it later this year....
Mad Cow Proposals Lead to Fight In the wake of confirmation that a U.S.-reared animal had mad cow disease, California cattle ranchers and grocers are battling consumer, health and labor groups over legislation aimed at allaying fears about tainted meat. One lawmaker wants to require that beef carry labels showing its country of origin, and to force health authorities to make detailed public announcements about recalls of all contaminated meat and poultry. Another wants to permit ranchers to voluntarily test their cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, so-called mad cow disease. Federal regulations bar testing, labeling and detailed disclosure about recalls. Foes of the state effort say that federal law takes precedence and that courts would strike down any state statutes. But consumer groups, saying the federal government is soft on meat producers, hope California can force the issue by approving state laws that might pressure the federal government to act....
Farmers evade cow testing, critic says A key lawmaker is raising concerns that farmers and ranchers are burying dead cattle rather than sending them to processing plants where they would be tested for mad cow disease. U.S. Agriculture Department records show there was a 20 percent drop last year in the number of farms reporting that they have cattle that are unable to walk - the kind of cattle considered at highest risk for the disease. The disclosure gives ammunition to critics who say the government must do more to protect the public from mad cow disease. The USDA's testing program is missing cattle that may be infected, they say. "These numbers prove that this voluntary testing program that has little oversight is not working," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the senior Democrat on the House agricultural appropriations sub- committee....
Ranchers buck U.S. beef policy When Bill Bullard is making a speech to cattle ranchers, it's always a good sign when the parking lot is full of new pickups, as was the case on a recent evening at the VFW hall on the outskirts of this tiny town in south Texas. Bullard is the executive director of R-CALF USA, a maverick organization of ranchers fighting to keep the U.S. border closed to Canadian cattle, an effort that was precipitated by the discovery of Canada's first case of mad cow disease in May 2003. Bullard argues that the border needs to remain sealed because of uncertainty over mad cow, an assertion that he says was reinforced by the June 24 announcement of the second case of mad cow disease in the U.S. But he is also quick to remind ranchers of a more practical benefit: In the two years since the U.S. border was sealed, beef prices for American ranchers have never been higher....
Column: Immigration's place in agriculture The range sheep industry in the United States is small, but as recent reports in The Denver Post detail, it is utterly dependent on foreign labor. The sheep industry is a microcosm of American agriculture. Without foreign workers, the United States could not produce food in commercial quantities. Consumers may look at lamb chops and wool sweaters and think they can do without or buy imports from Australia and China. However, if they eat fresh broccoli, or a lettuce and tomato salad, or drink orange juice, it is on their table because a foreign laborer helped to put it there. If a consumer enjoys chicken strips in a fast-food joint, or a fish dinner in a pricey restaurant, that chicken or fish has passed through the hands of a foreign worker. Steak or hamburger? The steer may have been herded by a foreign cowboy or processed by a foreign meat-cutter....
Building a future on rocks from the past Sometimes you have to look around to realize what you've got. Thomas and Mary Hoover figured that out in 1876. They were applying to open a post office in their Central Oregon rimrock settlement, so the story goes, when some government functionary asked them what they wanted to call it. The Hoovers were ranchers. Accounts vary, but supposedly a landslide out on their range sometime earlier had exposed the stony bones of a prehistoric animal. What it was has been lost to memory; various people recall that it was a woolly mammoth, a saber-toothed tiger, a camel-like animal or a three-toed horse. At any rate, the Hoovers supposedly looked at each other and knew the answer. "Fossil," they said. Jump forward 130 years, a blink of the eye in geologic time but a long haul for humans. Fossil, the county seat of Wheeler County, is a place waiting for something to happen. It's down to 460 souls now and hanging on, with a single, blinking red traffic light, 23 kids in the high school and people still shaking their heads about the closure of the Kinzua lumber mill 30 years ago....
More than a coffee shop General Mercantile experience goes deeper than caffeine and conversation — it's a destination Ray Domer is hard at work mixing cocoa powder into a gourmet blend of hot chocolate. Two tea-sized cups collect the savory drippings from an Italian espresso machine hissing behind the bar. The goldfish, which can't be overlooked, swim circles in a horse trough while a game of cribbage hits full swing — never mind the early hour. It's just after 8 a.m. on what may be the liveliest block of Last Chance Gulch in downtown Helena, a place where Domer has been in business for 34 years. His store, the General Mercantile, has become a mainstay and, you could say, an attraction unto itself. "As kids we all grew up going to Virginia City, Nevada City and Frontier Town," Domer said, passing a vanilla latte across the bar. "My dad was a rancher at the foot of Mount Baldy. All this wood came from his ranch."....
Indian art fits legend, man says Truckers and tourists speeding between Coachella and Blythe on Interstate 10 won't see a billboard pointing to the cradle of Aztec civilization. But somewhere between the George S. Patton Museum in Chiriaco Summit and the Desert Center plaque marking the birthplace of modern health insurance, Alfredo Acosta Figueroa says the bygone inhabitants of Aztlán left their own imprint on the landscape. Figueroa credits ancestors of the Aztecs, builders of an indigenous empire that Spanish conquerors in the 16th century said rivaled Venice, with creating a network of rock carvings, intaglios and prehistoric trails roughly from Joshua Tree National Park to the Colorado River....
Mustang Ranch sort of back in saddle The Mustang Ranch, the best-known little whorehouse in the West, is back in business at a new location. The gaudy pink stucco buildings and the working girls are there. The only thing missing is the name. The bordello reopened Friday east of Reno with the generic name World Famous Brothel six years after the government shut it down and auctioned its buildings and contents. The government seized the Mustang Ranch in 1999 after its parent companies and manager were convicted in a federal fraud and racketeering trial. But the Bureau of Land Management was uneasy about owning a brothel and put it up for grabs on eBay. Bordello owner Lance Gilman snapped it up for $145,100, then spent $4 million to carve up the buildings and move them to his Wild Horse Resort & Spa brothel, 5 miles east of the old Mustang site....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Overseas service is whole different rodeo Out of the clear blue of the Persian sky, a helicopter approached the base and one of its blades hit a dirigible cable. A quick call was made to headquarters as they watched the freed balloon rising into the prevailing winds and drifting toward Iran. I'm sure many of you cowboys at home are thinking "What would I do?" A biplane with a hook or a team roper on the wing? A helicopter approach from the top lowering a bull rider onto the dirigible with his Moore Maker balloon-piercing knife? Have two fly fisherman from Bozeman parachute by and reel it in? Not the Air Force....
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Herds, history fade from desert Tom Wetterman looked out across Hidden Valley, the pale green hills to the north and south fading into the brown of summer. Record rains made it a perfect year for cattle ranching on this High Desert ranch east of Barstow. It seemed like just one more slap in the face. "You dream about years like this," Wetterman said. "And now I'm leaving." After 30 years of ranching in the desert, the cowboy who was once the model for the Marlboro man is packing it in. Battling environmental activists and government officials over increasing restrictions on cattle grazing in the Mojave Desert has worn him down, he says. He's one of the last ranchers to leave as a nearly 150-year period of raising cattle in the western Mojave Desert comes to an end. When the Army offered to buy him out last year as part of Fort Irwin's expansion, Wetterman and his wife, Jeanne, decided it was time to go. They sold their spread for $800,000 and bought a ranch in New Mexico, where they're moving their operation, including their 200 head of cattle. The military might use the ranch house as a residence for biologists studying the desert tortoise. But everything else will be hauled away, leaving the desert to slowly return to its pre-cattle state....
Sierra Club, industry at odds over Red Desert While the Sierra Club calls Wyoming's Red Desert one of the 50 most endangered places in the United States, oil and gas industry officials say that's an overblown assessment. ''Environmentalists are relying on hysteria to achieve their goals,'' said Steve Degenfelder, vice president for lands for Double Eagle Petroleum Co. The Sierra Club's decision to put the Red Desert on its America's Great Outdoors list results from plans to drill 10,000 coal-bed methane wells, traditional gas wells, and oil wells in southwestern Wyoming. The list also includes Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, the Roan Plateau in Colorado, the Boise River in Idaho, The Great Burn Roadless Area in Montana, the Cheyenne River Valley in South Dakota and the Sand Hills in Nebraska. Besides mining and drilling, recreation and other development also threaten the sites, according to the Sierra Club's Web site. ''Each of them requires urgent and bold action,'' the site said....
GOCO under fire Four years ago, Colorado voters overwhelmingly approved the use of $115 million in bonds to preserve open-space land around the state. To date, none of that money has been spent, and critics say that is because the Great Outdoors Colorado board that oversees the spending is resisting the will of the voters. They say the board has shifted its emphasis from buying open space to paying ranchers and farmers not to sell out to developers. "They have broken faith with the voters by de-emphasizing acquisition of land," said state Sen. Dan Grossman, D-Denver. "They don't like the idea of the state holding title to land. If you're not acquiring land, there's no reason to use bonding." GOCO officials dispute Grossman's characterization. They say they have preserved thousands of acres in the past year and GOCO still will have the capacity to issue bonds in the future....
Preserves to be mapped Coloradans have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the past decade to buy up open-space land, and they may soon know exactly what they have received for all of that money. GOCO, or Great Outdoors Colorado, the state agency that spends lottery-fund proceeds on open space, has contracted with a Colorado State University laboratory to map all of the protected open space in Colorado. The project is more complicated than it might sound, since there are dozens of city and county open- space programs and nonprofit land trusts operating in the state. Some of the open space is bought outright, while other properties are protected through conservation easements that forbid the development of private ranchland. "It's a fair question to say, 'How much has been spent and what do we have for that?' " GOCO spokeswoman Chris Leding said....
Ranch could be site of 94-home subdivision A scenic Missouri Heights ranch that has historical buildings on its property is for sale, and a new owner could build as many as 94 homes on the spread. The 565-acre Hunt Ranch has a price tag of $8.75 million. It offers views of Mount Sopris and Capitol Peak, and has superior water rights, according to an advertisement in The Aspen Times. While a 94-home subdivision may seem like a lot in the somewhat secluded area above El Jebel - Marble, by way of comparison, has about 80 year-round residents - it is allowed under the Garfield County master plan, said Edward Sanditen of Carol Dopkin Real Estate. He is handling the ranch's sale....
Legislation aimed at weakening Endangered Species Act Republican congressional critics of the Endangered Species Act have drafted legislation hedging the government's obligation to take all necessary steps to bring back to robust health any species on the brink of extinction. The draft envisions more limited government obligations: ensuring that the status of an endangered plant or animal gets no worse and helping to make it better. The draft legislation, prepared by the Republican staff of the House Resources Committee, narrows the law's reach, potentially exempting many federal actions that are now subject to review. In addition, it requires the authority to list subgroups of a species of fish or wildlife as endangered be used "only sparingly." The draft would automatically take the law off the books in 2015....
Bat study taking wing Three bat lovers stand under the light of a tailgate in the darkness of the Arizona Strip, holding fuzzy specimens as closely as newborn infants in gloved hands. They turn over three bats, stretching the wings in their headlamps, looking for signs of pregnancy, age and species, measuring the forearms. More than 30 people have traveled from Tucson and the San Francisco Bay Area to wade through stagnant pools in a vacant pasture at night netting bats for a Northern Arizona University professor's study. Most are here, south of Marble Canyon, for a glimpse at one species rarely ever seen, the spotted bat. It's one of the super athletes of the mammalian world, flying up to 30 mph and 50 miles per night to feed, though it only weighs the equivalent of four Hershey's Kisses....
Cattlemen conditionally support Simpson bill The Idaho Cattle Association is reluctantly supporting the Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act currently in Congress, provided that a compensation clause is included. In its present form, the proposal includes compensation for seven ranchers on the East Fork of the Salmon River, said Lindsay Slater, aide to Simpson. They hold U.S. Forest Service grazing permits that were sharply cut back as a result of environmental lawsuits. The cuts reduced animal unit months and the time on the range by up to 50 percent on each operation. “We wanted to stabilize those ranchers, but our hands were tied by the litigation. Our first idea was to trade lands, giving them private instead of federal forest lands on which to run. There were no lands to trade. So we came up with a compensation clause,” Slater said. “It gives those ranchers the right to seek $300 per AUM.”....
Roads to an end: Outfitter’s business suffers as roadless ruling opens door for gas drilling It’s quite a haul to Jeff Mead’s little piece of heaven. The four-hour trek by horse or mule takes visitors deep into the White River National Forest about 20 miles south of Rifle. The hunters who put down substantial cash for Mead’s guided pack trips seek solitude and a successful hunt, two things the veteran outfitter has consistently delivered. Until now. The paradise the 50-year-old Grand Junction man loves to share with sportsmen every fall may be paradise lost. The lure of natural resources beneath the forests that afford Mead’s customers such prime hunting threatens his outfitting business. Mead learned three years ago the relatively untouched 39-square-mile parcel of federal woodlands he leases from the U.S. Forest Service could be opened to drilling....
Wyoming asks feds for more leeway in shooting wolves Wyoming on Friday asked federal wildlife managers to be more proactive in managing wolves by allowing ranchers to shoot problem wolves and reimbursing producers for damage caused by the predators. The petition filed with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is the latest move in an ongoing legal and bureaucratic struggle between Wyoming and the federal government over management of wolves since they were reintroduced into the Northern Rockies 10 years ago. The animals are flourishing, with an estimated population of more than 800 in the region, raising concerns from agriculture interests, landowners, outfitters and state officials of a growing threat to wildlife, livestock and domestic pets. "The Fish and Wildlife Service is responsible for wolf reintroduction, but it hasn't taken responsibility for the way that program has played out on the ground in Wyoming," Gov. Dave Freudenthal said in a release....
Activists to file appeal in forest road dispute A citizen activist group said it will pursue an appeal of a Forest Service decision concerning a remote forest road that runs along a river with threatened fish if a provision to close the last half-mile isn’t dropped. But Bob Vaught, supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, said the demand by the Shovel Brigade is out of the question. “We’re not willing to do that,” Vaught told the Elko Daily Free Press. Meanwhile, Elko County District Attorney Gary Woodbury said while the county won’t appeal the Forest Service decision over South Canyon Road, he’s prepared to take the issue of ownership to court. Elko County commissioners are scheduled to consider their options when they meet this week....
Who has a right to the roads? Counties across the country have laid claim to roadways on federal lands under a historic law passed after the Civil War to encourage settlement of the western frontier. They've also used it to foil private property owners' attempts to block access to public lands. Revised Statute 2477 is a one-sentence provision of the Lode Mining Act of 1866, whose simple language has created a hornet's nest of interpretation that is buzzing across the West. The statute was repealed in 1976 when Congress passed the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which defined rights of way across federal lands. RS 2477 granted rights of way to local governments for the construction of highways over public lands not reserved for other uses such as an Indian reservation. In essence, the statute says that if states, counties or individuals can prove a road has been in use before 1976 or before the land it crossed was reserved, it could still be claimed as a legitimate right of way. Since then, the law has pitted local governments against the feds, counties against private landowners, with environmental groups and off-road groups, among others, joining the fray....
Timber companies sue for reparations Timber companies shut out of federal forests by environmental lawsuits have found a way to use those lawsuits in their favor. They're doing it by using the same argument as the activists who filed the lawsuits: The government failed to follow laws such as the Endangered Species Act that protect wildlife. But the companies are taking the argument in a different direction: They say the government should have known better than to offer the logging contracts and thus owes them for money they lost when courts sided with the activists and stopped the cutting. Federal judges have ruled in decisive cases that the companies have a good point. It can take years of legal back-and-forth before cash is awarded. But companies are filing a lengthening list of claims -- including more than a dozen since last year for long-delayed Oregon timber sales -- that could cost taxpayers millions of dollars. The surge of claims builds on $27.3 million that the U.S. Forest Service has paid to timber companies since 1992, including $2.8 million last year, for Oregon and Washington logging projects that fell through....
Forest Service denying access to summits of Colorado peaks The U.S. Forest Service has stopped issuing access permits to hikers hoping to reach the top of four 14,000-foot peaks in Colorado because the trails cross private land. The agency this week began distributing fliers warning hikers to keep off trails to Mount Democrat, Mount Lincoln, Mount Bross and Mount Cameron in Park County unless they have permission from landowners who acquired the land through old mining claims. "The bottom line is there is no public access to those peaks," Sara Mayben, head of the Forest Service's South Park Ranger District, told The Denver Post. "We can't stop the public from trespassing, but we will take steps to make it clear that they are."....
Man gets 30 days in jail for snowmobile incident A man was sentenced to 30 days in jail for striking a U.S. Forest Service officer with his snowmobile during a February confrontation in an off-limits area at Lake Tahoe. At a hearing in El Dorado County Superior Court, Gregg Gemmet was ordered to pay full restitution for officer Ron Thompson’s injuries. Gemmet, a mechanic with the Tahoe-Douglas Fire Protection District, also was ordered to donate his snowmobile to a search and rescue team, write a letter of apology and speak to a snowmobile group. An original charge of felony aggravated assault was reduced to misdemeanor aggravated assault under an agreement, Uthe said....and Kit Laney gets five months in a Federal prison. Mr. Gemmet should be glad he wasn't riding a horse and that David Iglesias is not the US Attorney for his state....
BLM hopes to OK 1,000 new permits TheBureau of Land Management's Buffalo field office expects to approve about 1,000 more coal-bed methane drilling permits by the end of September. "We've issued 1,334 of our targeted 2,425 approvals for the year," said Richard Zander, assistant field manager with the agency's Buffalo office. The agency's permitting year runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. Zander said his office has about 1,050 permits in the approval process with 48 of those for projects on U.S. Forest Service land, which were sent to the Forest Service office in Douglas for National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) review. BLM cannot issue those permits until the Forest Service completes its NEPA review process. "We were hoping to see at least 40 of those permits back in our office by mid-May, but we haven't seen them yet," Zander said....
BLM jumps back into auctioning gas, oil leases The oil and gas leases to more than 17,000 acres that were spared the gavel in May, after local surface-rights owner complaints, are back on the block for the Bureau of Land Management's quarterly auction Aug. 11. In early May, surface-rights owners of 14 parcels in Montrose and nearby counties complained the agency's snarled Web site and poorly posted notices gave them only a week's notification, rather than the 45 days to which they were entitled. The BLM owns the mineral development rights to those properties, a situation known as "split estate." It deferred the 14 parcels from the May sale and created new notification options that include a notification registration list. Wednesday, Duane Spencer, spokesman for the BLM's state office in Lakewood, said because the notification issued had been resolved, the parcels' development rights are being offered for sale in August....
Actor Rick Schroder and his West Slope neighbors lock horns Two locks secure the thick chain that holds the steel gate closing the mountain road. The brass lock requires a combination, and the chrome lock opens with a key. The heavy gate, and the fence standing erect on either side of it, bar entry to Mesa Mood Ranch, actor Rick Schroder's New Age-sounding retreat 25 miles southwest of Grand Junction. No-trespassing signs, posted at regular intervals, warn off the uninvited. At issue in this Western Slope legal drama is access to land, which is as bitter a dispute in the New West as it was in the Old West. The conventional wisdom in the community, as sampled at Freeman's Barber Stop, is that Schroder, a Republican who belongs to the National Rifle Association, never really bonded with Grand Junction, though the two would seem a good fit. Grand Junction is a conservative community where hunting is a major element in the economy....
Editorial: U.S. Attorney should take action in road-sign dispute A request for legal action against Kane County has languished in the office of U.S. Attorney for Utah Paul Warner long enough. It's time for an accounting. Kane County officials, fighting for greater access to public lands, defied federal law in 2003 when they posted signs directing off-highway vehicles to trails that are off-limits inside the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and tore down signs that closed roads on federal lands to OHV use. Kane County Commissioner Mark Habbeshaw says he wants a court to settle the two-year dispute, and we agree that there is no other way to deal with it, as Habbeshaw and his county cohorts apparently do not intend to comply with the law. After Bureau of Land Management Director Sally Wisely ordered the county to remove its signs from federal land or face a lawsuit, Habbeshaw and the county commission removed 52 signs, but they left others in place and put up some new ones on roads the county considers easiest to defend in court. The U.S. Attorney's Office has been investigating the illegal removal of BLM signs for two years now....
Editorial: Land assault Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. portrayed himself as a moderate on issues of land use and the environment. But as governor he has solidly aligned himself with those who seek broader use of federal lands, including access via questionable "roads" into wilderness study areas. With Huntsman's assent, the state has filed five road claims under a deal struck by former Gov. Mike Leavitt and Secretary of Interior Gale Norton to broker conflicting claims to roads on federal lands. Environmental groups successfully challenged one of those claims and are questioning the others, pointing to aerial photographs, maps and historical records that would seem to indicate they, too, fail to meet the criteria. On another front, the Utah Attorney General's Office has filed suit to regain access to five roads that were closed by the Bureau of Land Management as part of a much-discussed travel plan for off-highway vehicles in the San Rafael Swell that was put in place in 2003, as well as access to two others in a congressionally established wilderness study area. The state has also joined a San Juan County lawsuit that seeks ownership of an undeveloped road, essentially a stream bed, in Canyonlands National Park. And it has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in a Mountain States Legal Foundation lawsuit aimed at shrinking the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument....
9 spooked wild horses die in Calgary ride An annual round-up of 200 wild horses went terribly wrong in Calgary, Alberta, when nine of the animals were spooked on a bridge and plunged to their deaths. As part of Trail Ride 2005, ranch hands were guiding about 200 wild horses on a six-day, 125-mile journey from the Stampede Ranch near Hanna, Alberta, to the site of the Calgary Stampede's downtown event. Stampede spokesman Lindsey Galloway said some horses became frightened as they crossed a bridge over the Bow River....
Column: Lessons From the Kelo Decision One week after the Kelo decision by the Supreme Court, Americans are still reeling from the shock of having our nation’s highest tribunal endorse using government power to condemn private homes to benefit a property developer. Even as we celebrate our independence from England this July 4th, we find ourselves increasingly enslaved by petty bureaucrats at every level of government. The anger engendered by the Kelo case certainly resonates on this holiday based on rebellion against government. Kelo has several important lessons for all of us. We are witnessing the destruction of any last remnants of the separation of powers doctrine, a doctrine our founders considered critical to freedom. The notion that the judicial branch of government serves as a watchdog to curb legislative and executive abuses has been entirely exposed as an illusion. Judges not only fail to defend our freedoms, they actively infringe upon them by acting as de facto legislators. Thus Kelo serves as a stark reminder that we cannot rely on judges to protect our freedoms. If anything, the Supreme Court should have refused to hear the Kelo case on the grounds that the 5th amendment does not apply to states. If constitutional purists hope to maintain credibility, we must reject the phony incorporation doctrine in all cases – not only when it serves our interests. The issue in the Kelo case is the legality of the eminent domain action under Connecticut law, not federal law. Congress can and should act to prevent the federal government from seizing private property, but the fight against local eminent domain actions must take place at the local level....
House Registers Strong Disapproval of Supreme Court Ruling The House of Representatives can't undo a troubling Supreme Court ruling, but it can -- and did -- send a message to the states. On Thursday, the House voted 365-33 to condemn the court's Kelo v. City of New London ruling that allows the government to take private property for "economic development." Private homes may be turned over to private commercial developers with "just compensation" -- even if homeowners object, the court said. In addition to the resolution, legislation has been introduced in both the House and Senate to limit federal funding for cities and municipalities that use eminent domain to seize property for economic development. House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-Wis.) introduced the House bill, and he said he expects the House Judiciary Committee to consider it later this year....
Mad Cow Proposals Lead to Fight In the wake of confirmation that a U.S.-reared animal had mad cow disease, California cattle ranchers and grocers are battling consumer, health and labor groups over legislation aimed at allaying fears about tainted meat. One lawmaker wants to require that beef carry labels showing its country of origin, and to force health authorities to make detailed public announcements about recalls of all contaminated meat and poultry. Another wants to permit ranchers to voluntarily test their cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, so-called mad cow disease. Federal regulations bar testing, labeling and detailed disclosure about recalls. Foes of the state effort say that federal law takes precedence and that courts would strike down any state statutes. But consumer groups, saying the federal government is soft on meat producers, hope California can force the issue by approving state laws that might pressure the federal government to act....
Farmers evade cow testing, critic says A key lawmaker is raising concerns that farmers and ranchers are burying dead cattle rather than sending them to processing plants where they would be tested for mad cow disease. U.S. Agriculture Department records show there was a 20 percent drop last year in the number of farms reporting that they have cattle that are unable to walk - the kind of cattle considered at highest risk for the disease. The disclosure gives ammunition to critics who say the government must do more to protect the public from mad cow disease. The USDA's testing program is missing cattle that may be infected, they say. "These numbers prove that this voluntary testing program that has little oversight is not working," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the senior Democrat on the House agricultural appropriations sub- committee....
Ranchers buck U.S. beef policy When Bill Bullard is making a speech to cattle ranchers, it's always a good sign when the parking lot is full of new pickups, as was the case on a recent evening at the VFW hall on the outskirts of this tiny town in south Texas. Bullard is the executive director of R-CALF USA, a maverick organization of ranchers fighting to keep the U.S. border closed to Canadian cattle, an effort that was precipitated by the discovery of Canada's first case of mad cow disease in May 2003. Bullard argues that the border needs to remain sealed because of uncertainty over mad cow, an assertion that he says was reinforced by the June 24 announcement of the second case of mad cow disease in the U.S. But he is also quick to remind ranchers of a more practical benefit: In the two years since the U.S. border was sealed, beef prices for American ranchers have never been higher....
Column: Immigration's place in agriculture The range sheep industry in the United States is small, but as recent reports in The Denver Post detail, it is utterly dependent on foreign labor. The sheep industry is a microcosm of American agriculture. Without foreign workers, the United States could not produce food in commercial quantities. Consumers may look at lamb chops and wool sweaters and think they can do without or buy imports from Australia and China. However, if they eat fresh broccoli, or a lettuce and tomato salad, or drink orange juice, it is on their table because a foreign laborer helped to put it there. If a consumer enjoys chicken strips in a fast-food joint, or a fish dinner in a pricey restaurant, that chicken or fish has passed through the hands of a foreign worker. Steak or hamburger? The steer may have been herded by a foreign cowboy or processed by a foreign meat-cutter....
Building a future on rocks from the past Sometimes you have to look around to realize what you've got. Thomas and Mary Hoover figured that out in 1876. They were applying to open a post office in their Central Oregon rimrock settlement, so the story goes, when some government functionary asked them what they wanted to call it. The Hoovers were ranchers. Accounts vary, but supposedly a landslide out on their range sometime earlier had exposed the stony bones of a prehistoric animal. What it was has been lost to memory; various people recall that it was a woolly mammoth, a saber-toothed tiger, a camel-like animal or a three-toed horse. At any rate, the Hoovers supposedly looked at each other and knew the answer. "Fossil," they said. Jump forward 130 years, a blink of the eye in geologic time but a long haul for humans. Fossil, the county seat of Wheeler County, is a place waiting for something to happen. It's down to 460 souls now and hanging on, with a single, blinking red traffic light, 23 kids in the high school and people still shaking their heads about the closure of the Kinzua lumber mill 30 years ago....
More than a coffee shop General Mercantile experience goes deeper than caffeine and conversation — it's a destination Ray Domer is hard at work mixing cocoa powder into a gourmet blend of hot chocolate. Two tea-sized cups collect the savory drippings from an Italian espresso machine hissing behind the bar. The goldfish, which can't be overlooked, swim circles in a horse trough while a game of cribbage hits full swing — never mind the early hour. It's just after 8 a.m. on what may be the liveliest block of Last Chance Gulch in downtown Helena, a place where Domer has been in business for 34 years. His store, the General Mercantile, has become a mainstay and, you could say, an attraction unto itself. "As kids we all grew up going to Virginia City, Nevada City and Frontier Town," Domer said, passing a vanilla latte across the bar. "My dad was a rancher at the foot of Mount Baldy. All this wood came from his ranch."....
Indian art fits legend, man says Truckers and tourists speeding between Coachella and Blythe on Interstate 10 won't see a billboard pointing to the cradle of Aztec civilization. But somewhere between the George S. Patton Museum in Chiriaco Summit and the Desert Center plaque marking the birthplace of modern health insurance, Alfredo Acosta Figueroa says the bygone inhabitants of Aztlán left their own imprint on the landscape. Figueroa credits ancestors of the Aztecs, builders of an indigenous empire that Spanish conquerors in the 16th century said rivaled Venice, with creating a network of rock carvings, intaglios and prehistoric trails roughly from Joshua Tree National Park to the Colorado River....
Mustang Ranch sort of back in saddle The Mustang Ranch, the best-known little whorehouse in the West, is back in business at a new location. The gaudy pink stucco buildings and the working girls are there. The only thing missing is the name. The bordello reopened Friday east of Reno with the generic name World Famous Brothel six years after the government shut it down and auctioned its buildings and contents. The government seized the Mustang Ranch in 1999 after its parent companies and manager were convicted in a federal fraud and racketeering trial. But the Bureau of Land Management was uneasy about owning a brothel and put it up for grabs on eBay. Bordello owner Lance Gilman snapped it up for $145,100, then spent $4 million to carve up the buildings and move them to his Wild Horse Resort & Spa brothel, 5 miles east of the old Mustang site....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Overseas service is whole different rodeo Out of the clear blue of the Persian sky, a helicopter approached the base and one of its blades hit a dirigible cable. A quick call was made to headquarters as they watched the freed balloon rising into the prevailing winds and drifting toward Iran. I'm sure many of you cowboys at home are thinking "What would I do?" A biplane with a hook or a team roper on the wing? A helicopter approach from the top lowering a bull rider onto the dirigible with his Moore Maker balloon-piercing knife? Have two fly fisherman from Bozeman parachute by and reel it in? Not the Air Force....
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Sunday, July 03, 2005
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER
Cowboy Christmas brings on the red and green
By Julie Carter
As America celebrates 229 years of Independence on July 4, rodeo cowboys across the country will observe an annual tradition of their own: “Cowboy Christmas.”
This summer holiday season is one of the rodeo circuits richest weekends of the year with at least 35 professional rodeos and several hundred open rodeos held annually to celebrate the holiday.
Cowboys and cowgirls will try to get to as many rodeos as they can in a 4-5 day period by driving and flying (and sometimes not in a plane) from one to the next, competing day and night for more prize money than is offered any other time of the circuit season.
Those grueling days and nights of endurance give new meaning to the traditional Christmas colors of red and green. For the rodeo cowboy, they are days and nights of burning red gritty eyes while they pursue their high hopes of winning a lot of green money.
The name rodeo comes from the Spanish word “rodear” which means to encircle or to surround. To the Spanish, when they arrived in Mexico in the mid-sixteenth century, a rodeo was a cattle roundup. The competition of showing off their skills in breaking broncs and roping wild cattle eventually evolved into organized contests in the mid-eighteen hundreds.
Every year about 24 million people go to rodeos and the sport ranks seventh in attendance ahead of pro-golf and tennis. Some 60 million more watch televised rodeo events and the cowboys that “yusta ride’em” will tape it and watch it several times.
In l997 Texas named rodeo as their official sport. Texas would like to take credit for the first rodeo celebration. In the early l880’s in the West Texas town of Pecos, cowboys would get off work and come into town on the Fourth of July. They would thunder down Main Street roping steers and then corral them in the courthouse square. By some historical accounts, this was the birth of rodeo in the United States.
Deertrail, Colorado also lays claim to the earliest rodeo but it was a group of Texans that started one of those earliest rodeos in Cheyenne, Wyoming in l872. The occasion was the forerunner of the current weeklong Cheyenne Frontier Days.
As the story goes, some Texas cowboys had arrived in Cheyenne and decided to celebrate the Fourth of July with an exhibition of their steer riding prowess. The event was successful enough that the next year to celebrate Independence Day, some local cowboys decided to do a little bronc busting down the middle of one of Cheyenne’s main streets.
Here in Lincoln County, hundreds of contestants will compete in two rodeos a day for the four day holiday. The afternoon performances of the Mescalero Apache Ceremonial & Rodeo include a pow-wow, Dance of the Maidens and other traditional Apache dances.
Those same competitors, and many more that will come through the county on their way to other rodeos, will compete in Capitan at four nights of the 50th Annual Smokey Bear Stampede.
You’ll spot them around the county as they pull in to buy fuel--both for their truck for themselves as they get a “for the road- heartburn burrito.” By Sunday they’ll look haggard and worn, but at each rodeo they’ll perk up about the time the National Anthem is played signifying to the bareback riders that their event is about to begin.
For the world beyond rodeo, I’d like to designate the Fourth of July as a “Be kind to a rodeo cowboy” holiday. They don’t all win, they can’t all afford it but across the board they all love it with a passion only they feel and no one understands.
When the rodeo cowboy lays his hat on his heart in honor of the American flag, let us tip our hats to them for being an enduring part of American history.
Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net
© Julie Carter 2005
Where shall we hide?
by Larry Gabriel
Does anyone else get tired of the constant national media barrage of things to fear? You know the things: wars, old age, sharks, kidnappers, global warming, asteroids, mad cows, etc….
Luckily I only have to deal with questions about the smaller ones like BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) more commonly called "mad cow disease".
We finally found a USA-born (prior to the 1997 feed ban) cow with BSE after testing 338,309 cattle since June, 2004. It made headlines all over the world. Taiwan immediately re-closed its borders to beef after opening them for the first times since a Canadian BSE cow was found here in 2003.
It is frustrating to watch the news media wipe out a year of work with a one-minute blurb. They leave out "little" facts like: all high-risk cattle and specified risk materials are banned from the human food chain. Those are "key facts".
The BSE risk to humans is minuscule. BSE in cattle is suspected of causing a similar disease (variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or vCJD) in people who ate infected meat containing spinal or brain tissue.
World-wide there are 153 people cases. Most of them were found in Great Britain after they began vCJD surveillance fifteen years ago.
Great Britain had 180,000 confirmed cases of BSE. We have had two. The difference between two cows and 180,000 is significant. Even with the massive contamination in their food supply (homogenates of cow brain were used commonly to bind ground beef in burgers) relatively few people died from it.
Don't get me wrong. Every one of these deaths is a tragedy, but life is filled with tragedy. About 13,000,000 people die each year from communicable diseases and another 62,000 in disasters. On an average day about 24,000 people starve and another 1,400 are murdered. Someone commits suicide about every 40 seconds.
The leading dangers to your life in the United States are in the order of greatest to least risk: heart disease, cancer, stroke, accident, motor vehicles, suicide, falling down, assault, fires, nature, electrocution, drowning, air travel, food.
As near as I can tell about one in a million people develop CJD and fewer than that develop the variant.
Your chances of being killed by an asteroid or tsunami are greater than your chances of getting vCJD. As a matter of fact, if you are reading this you survived a risk that is probably twice as dangerous. You survived fireworks on the 4th of July.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Liberty has its prices (like having to listen to sensationalism) but it beats any other option.
Larry Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture
I welcome submissions for this feature of The Westerner.
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Cowboy Christmas brings on the red and green
By Julie Carter
As America celebrates 229 years of Independence on July 4, rodeo cowboys across the country will observe an annual tradition of their own: “Cowboy Christmas.”
This summer holiday season is one of the rodeo circuits richest weekends of the year with at least 35 professional rodeos and several hundred open rodeos held annually to celebrate the holiday.
Cowboys and cowgirls will try to get to as many rodeos as they can in a 4-5 day period by driving and flying (and sometimes not in a plane) from one to the next, competing day and night for more prize money than is offered any other time of the circuit season.
Those grueling days and nights of endurance give new meaning to the traditional Christmas colors of red and green. For the rodeo cowboy, they are days and nights of burning red gritty eyes while they pursue their high hopes of winning a lot of green money.
The name rodeo comes from the Spanish word “rodear” which means to encircle or to surround. To the Spanish, when they arrived in Mexico in the mid-sixteenth century, a rodeo was a cattle roundup. The competition of showing off their skills in breaking broncs and roping wild cattle eventually evolved into organized contests in the mid-eighteen hundreds.
Every year about 24 million people go to rodeos and the sport ranks seventh in attendance ahead of pro-golf and tennis. Some 60 million more watch televised rodeo events and the cowboys that “yusta ride’em” will tape it and watch it several times.
In l997 Texas named rodeo as their official sport. Texas would like to take credit for the first rodeo celebration. In the early l880’s in the West Texas town of Pecos, cowboys would get off work and come into town on the Fourth of July. They would thunder down Main Street roping steers and then corral them in the courthouse square. By some historical accounts, this was the birth of rodeo in the United States.
Deertrail, Colorado also lays claim to the earliest rodeo but it was a group of Texans that started one of those earliest rodeos in Cheyenne, Wyoming in l872. The occasion was the forerunner of the current weeklong Cheyenne Frontier Days.
As the story goes, some Texas cowboys had arrived in Cheyenne and decided to celebrate the Fourth of July with an exhibition of their steer riding prowess. The event was successful enough that the next year to celebrate Independence Day, some local cowboys decided to do a little bronc busting down the middle of one of Cheyenne’s main streets.
Here in Lincoln County, hundreds of contestants will compete in two rodeos a day for the four day holiday. The afternoon performances of the Mescalero Apache Ceremonial & Rodeo include a pow-wow, Dance of the Maidens and other traditional Apache dances.
Those same competitors, and many more that will come through the county on their way to other rodeos, will compete in Capitan at four nights of the 50th Annual Smokey Bear Stampede.
You’ll spot them around the county as they pull in to buy fuel--both for their truck for themselves as they get a “for the road- heartburn burrito.” By Sunday they’ll look haggard and worn, but at each rodeo they’ll perk up about the time the National Anthem is played signifying to the bareback riders that their event is about to begin.
For the world beyond rodeo, I’d like to designate the Fourth of July as a “Be kind to a rodeo cowboy” holiday. They don’t all win, they can’t all afford it but across the board they all love it with a passion only they feel and no one understands.
When the rodeo cowboy lays his hat on his heart in honor of the American flag, let us tip our hats to them for being an enduring part of American history.
Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net
© Julie Carter 2005
Where shall we hide?
by Larry Gabriel
Does anyone else get tired of the constant national media barrage of things to fear? You know the things: wars, old age, sharks, kidnappers, global warming, asteroids, mad cows, etc….
Luckily I only have to deal with questions about the smaller ones like BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) more commonly called "mad cow disease".
We finally found a USA-born (prior to the 1997 feed ban) cow with BSE after testing 338,309 cattle since June, 2004. It made headlines all over the world. Taiwan immediately re-closed its borders to beef after opening them for the first times since a Canadian BSE cow was found here in 2003.
It is frustrating to watch the news media wipe out a year of work with a one-minute blurb. They leave out "little" facts like: all high-risk cattle and specified risk materials are banned from the human food chain. Those are "key facts".
The BSE risk to humans is minuscule. BSE in cattle is suspected of causing a similar disease (variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or vCJD) in people who ate infected meat containing spinal or brain tissue.
World-wide there are 153 people cases. Most of them were found in Great Britain after they began vCJD surveillance fifteen years ago.
Great Britain had 180,000 confirmed cases of BSE. We have had two. The difference between two cows and 180,000 is significant. Even with the massive contamination in their food supply (homogenates of cow brain were used commonly to bind ground beef in burgers) relatively few people died from it.
Don't get me wrong. Every one of these deaths is a tragedy, but life is filled with tragedy. About 13,000,000 people die each year from communicable diseases and another 62,000 in disasters. On an average day about 24,000 people starve and another 1,400 are murdered. Someone commits suicide about every 40 seconds.
The leading dangers to your life in the United States are in the order of greatest to least risk: heart disease, cancer, stroke, accident, motor vehicles, suicide, falling down, assault, fires, nature, electrocution, drowning, air travel, food.
As near as I can tell about one in a million people develop CJD and fewer than that develop the variant.
Your chances of being killed by an asteroid or tsunami are greater than your chances of getting vCJD. As a matter of fact, if you are reading this you survived a risk that is probably twice as dangerous. You survived fireworks on the 4th of July.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Liberty has its prices (like having to listen to sensationalism) but it beats any other option.
Larry Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture
I welcome submissions for this feature of The Westerner.
===
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
U.S. House Resources Committee holds hearing on impacts of federal land ownership on local communities
Wednesday, the U.S. House Resources Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health held a hearing on the "Impacts of Federal Land Ownership on Communities and Local Governments." The federal government owns approximately 671 million acres of land in the United States, on which it pays no property tax. Local communities surrounded by federal lands cannot collect taxes on it, cannot sell, or lease any of the acreage to generate revenue, so Congress has offset this impact with laws such as Payments in Lieu of Taxes Act of 1976 (PILT) and others. However, the funds from these bills are not equal to the loss of tax revenue. Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) noted that half of his district is federally owned, contains nine national forests, and four Bureau of Land Management (BLM) districts. Between 2000 and 2004, according to Walden, BLM acquired 300,000 additional acres, while the U.S. Forest Service acquired 500,000 acres of additional land. With maintenance backlogs of $15 billion, committee members asked federal land managers why their agencies kept acquiring more land....
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U.S. House Resources Committee holds hearing on impacts of federal land ownership on local communities
Wednesday, the U.S. House Resources Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health held a hearing on the "Impacts of Federal Land Ownership on Communities and Local Governments." The federal government owns approximately 671 million acres of land in the United States, on which it pays no property tax. Local communities surrounded by federal lands cannot collect taxes on it, cannot sell, or lease any of the acreage to generate revenue, so Congress has offset this impact with laws such as Payments in Lieu of Taxes Act of 1976 (PILT) and others. However, the funds from these bills are not equal to the loss of tax revenue. Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) noted that half of his district is federally owned, contains nine national forests, and four Bureau of Land Management (BLM) districts. Between 2000 and 2004, according to Walden, BLM acquired 300,000 additional acres, while the U.S. Forest Service acquired 500,000 acres of additional land. With maintenance backlogs of $15 billion, committee members asked federal land managers why their agencies kept acquiring more land....
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
Common Sense Environmentalism
The environmentalist left constantly warns us about how global warming will destroy our planet. Water levels will rise and drown all land. Desertification will cause millions of poor people to starve to death. The Gulf Stream will change course so that Europe will become a cold and barren continent. Human life is in danger of an unimaginable disaster if we do not dismantle the industrial world and join hands in a global socialist farming economy. This doomsday message is thought to our children in their schools as well as preached to the worlds governments. But does it really make sense? Common sense teaches us not to listen to environmentalists. For almost a hundred years we have been warned that the earth’s natural resources are going to be depleted in a few years. Not a single resource has been depleted, due to market mechanisms. During the 1960s and the 1970s environmentalists told us that billions would soon die due to overpopulation. They were wrong. During the 1970s and 1980s we were told that the Sahara desert was expanding due to human activity. It was found that this was part of a natural historical cycle. During the 1980s and the 1990s, we were warned that people would die due to lack of oxygen since the rainforests were cut down. There was no science behind this statement. During the same period we were told that up to 50% of the species on the Earth would die out in one or two decades. According to the UN only approximately 0.7% of the planets species died out between 1980-2000. Nobody has been so wrong, so often, as the environmentalist movement....
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Common Sense Environmentalism
The environmentalist left constantly warns us about how global warming will destroy our planet. Water levels will rise and drown all land. Desertification will cause millions of poor people to starve to death. The Gulf Stream will change course so that Europe will become a cold and barren continent. Human life is in danger of an unimaginable disaster if we do not dismantle the industrial world and join hands in a global socialist farming economy. This doomsday message is thought to our children in their schools as well as preached to the worlds governments. But does it really make sense? Common sense teaches us not to listen to environmentalists. For almost a hundred years we have been warned that the earth’s natural resources are going to be depleted in a few years. Not a single resource has been depleted, due to market mechanisms. During the 1960s and the 1970s environmentalists told us that billions would soon die due to overpopulation. They were wrong. During the 1970s and 1980s we were told that the Sahara desert was expanding due to human activity. It was found that this was part of a natural historical cycle. During the 1980s and the 1990s, we were warned that people would die due to lack of oxygen since the rainforests were cut down. There was no science behind this statement. During the same period we were told that up to 50% of the species on the Earth would die out in one or two decades. According to the UN only approximately 0.7% of the planets species died out between 1980-2000. Nobody has been so wrong, so often, as the environmentalist movement....
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
Europe's Rising Emissions
How is Europe responding to the challenge of global warming? With more global warming. That may seem incongruous given all of the EU's Kyoto hype, but take a look at the latest report from the European Environmental Agency on EU greenhouse gas emissions. In it we learn that between 2002 and 2003 emissions have increased by 53 million tons, i.e. 1.3 percent, in the EU-15 after having fallen for two years in a row. Basically all of the reductions achieved in 2001 and 2002 have been lost. according to the EEA, "The emission increase in 2003 was mainly caused by an increase in power production using coal. The colder weather in the first quarter in several EU countries, also contributed to an increased use of fossil fuels to heat homes and offices." This tells us two important things: on the one hand, despite their environmental rhetoric, European countries aren't able to promote non-carbon based fuels; on the other hand, a colder winter (are we talking about global warming?) drove emissions up, whereas in 2002 a warm summer resulted in less emissions. It seems that there is a sort of built-in mechanism that pushes emissions up in cold periods and pulls them down in warm periods. Of course that is obvious as you look at the market itself: people seek a comfortable environment, purely and simply, which may mean they have to heat their houses. Now, a mandatory reduction in European emissions means that (assuming humans have no control over climate, which is a very easy assumption) we have three possible scenarios....
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Permalink 0 comments
Europe's Rising Emissions
How is Europe responding to the challenge of global warming? With more global warming. That may seem incongruous given all of the EU's Kyoto hype, but take a look at the latest report from the European Environmental Agency on EU greenhouse gas emissions. In it we learn that between 2002 and 2003 emissions have increased by 53 million tons, i.e. 1.3 percent, in the EU-15 after having fallen for two years in a row. Basically all of the reductions achieved in 2001 and 2002 have been lost. according to the EEA, "The emission increase in 2003 was mainly caused by an increase in power production using coal. The colder weather in the first quarter in several EU countries, also contributed to an increased use of fossil fuels to heat homes and offices." This tells us two important things: on the one hand, despite their environmental rhetoric, European countries aren't able to promote non-carbon based fuels; on the other hand, a colder winter (are we talking about global warming?) drove emissions up, whereas in 2002 a warm summer resulted in less emissions. It seems that there is a sort of built-in mechanism that pushes emissions up in cold periods and pulls them down in warm periods. Of course that is obvious as you look at the market itself: people seek a comfortable environment, purely and simply, which may mean they have to heat their houses. Now, a mandatory reduction in European emissions means that (assuming humans have no control over climate, which is a very easy assumption) we have three possible scenarios....
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
Congress Should Lift OPEC’s Immunity
The cartel’s operations ensure that its members’ oil and gas economies remain insulated from foreign investment flows. Members of OPEC have not worked to enhance the rule of law and property rights and have imposed severe restrictions to prevent foreign investors from owning upstream production assets (oil fields and pipelines). This is a testament to the cartel’s de facto monopoly over the petroleum market. Indeed, the only serious challenge to the organization came in 1978 when a U.S. non-profit labor association, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), sued OPEC under the Sherman Antitrust Act, in IAM v. OPEC. But the case was rejected in 1981 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. OPEC, the court affirmed, could not be prosecuted under the Sherman Act due to the foreign sovereign immunity protection it claimed for its member states. That decision was wrong. Government-owned companies that engage in purely business activities do not warrant sovereign immunity protection according to prevailing legal doctrines.[1] High oil prices, which OPEC facilitates, serve to transfer wealth from Western consumers to petroleum producers. This wealth transfer funds terrorism through individual oil wealth and government-controlled “non-profit” foundations. It also permits hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent on radical Islamist education in madrassahs (Islamic religious academies)....
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Congress Should Lift OPEC’s Immunity
The cartel’s operations ensure that its members’ oil and gas economies remain insulated from foreign investment flows. Members of OPEC have not worked to enhance the rule of law and property rights and have imposed severe restrictions to prevent foreign investors from owning upstream production assets (oil fields and pipelines). This is a testament to the cartel’s de facto monopoly over the petroleum market. Indeed, the only serious challenge to the organization came in 1978 when a U.S. non-profit labor association, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), sued OPEC under the Sherman Antitrust Act, in IAM v. OPEC. But the case was rejected in 1981 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. OPEC, the court affirmed, could not be prosecuted under the Sherman Act due to the foreign sovereign immunity protection it claimed for its member states. That decision was wrong. Government-owned companies that engage in purely business activities do not warrant sovereign immunity protection according to prevailing legal doctrines.[1] High oil prices, which OPEC facilitates, serve to transfer wealth from Western consumers to petroleum producers. This wealth transfer funds terrorism through individual oil wealth and government-controlled “non-profit” foundations. It also permits hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent on radical Islamist education in madrassahs (Islamic religious academies)....
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
Who do you want managing our National Parks?
The Western Slope No-Fee Coalition based in Colorado has been a long time opponent to Fee Demonstration. In soliciting support for its anti-fee crusade, Coalition co-founder Kitty Benzar recently likened Fee Demonstration to "having to buy a pass to go into your house." But Ms. Benzar's analogy only holds water if she has been living in public housing for the last several years (and even then, people in public housing have to pay something for that most of the time). If she lives in a private house, her living space is not paid for by tax dollars, but rather by her personal income. Moreover, it is the ownership aspect of private housing that ensures it remains in better shape than public housing. Similar to public housing, the nation's federal lands suffered from graffiti and littering problems as use has increased. In 1999, the National Parks Conservation Association named the Chaco Culture National Historic Park in New Mexico as one of the ten most threatened parks in the country. The main threat to the park came from vandalism and looting. Free access to the park not only led to a higher number of misfit visitors, but a lack of respect for the park's value. Forest Service lands across the country also suffered from vandalism and littering. "The anecdotal evidence is that [fees are] slowing vandalism," noted a forest supervisor for the San Bernardino National Forest. A Park Service report found similar drops in criminal activity at sites charging fees. Not only do fees discourage vandals from using federal lands in the first place, but they provide funding to clean up litter and vandalism when it does occur. For twenty years prior to the start of Fee Demonstration, the appropriations for federal land agencies outpaced increases in visitation, even when factoring in inflation. The percentage growth in full-time staff also outpaced increases in visitation over that time period and yet the resources themselves continued to deteriorate as multi-million dollar backlogs rose on both Forest Service and Park Service lands. Congress constantly threw more money at the land agencies, but the misguided incentives created by tax-funding directed those increased appropriations to the wrong projects (like million-dollar outhouses)....
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Who do you want managing our National Parks?
The Western Slope No-Fee Coalition based in Colorado has been a long time opponent to Fee Demonstration. In soliciting support for its anti-fee crusade, Coalition co-founder Kitty Benzar recently likened Fee Demonstration to "having to buy a pass to go into your house." But Ms. Benzar's analogy only holds water if she has been living in public housing for the last several years (and even then, people in public housing have to pay something for that most of the time). If she lives in a private house, her living space is not paid for by tax dollars, but rather by her personal income. Moreover, it is the ownership aspect of private housing that ensures it remains in better shape than public housing. Similar to public housing, the nation's federal lands suffered from graffiti and littering problems as use has increased. In 1999, the National Parks Conservation Association named the Chaco Culture National Historic Park in New Mexico as one of the ten most threatened parks in the country. The main threat to the park came from vandalism and looting. Free access to the park not only led to a higher number of misfit visitors, but a lack of respect for the park's value. Forest Service lands across the country also suffered from vandalism and littering. "The anecdotal evidence is that [fees are] slowing vandalism," noted a forest supervisor for the San Bernardino National Forest. A Park Service report found similar drops in criminal activity at sites charging fees. Not only do fees discourage vandals from using federal lands in the first place, but they provide funding to clean up litter and vandalism when it does occur. For twenty years prior to the start of Fee Demonstration, the appropriations for federal land agencies outpaced increases in visitation, even when factoring in inflation. The percentage growth in full-time staff also outpaced increases in visitation over that time period and yet the resources themselves continued to deteriorate as multi-million dollar backlogs rose on both Forest Service and Park Service lands. Congress constantly threw more money at the land agencies, but the misguided incentives created by tax-funding directed those increased appropriations to the wrong projects (like million-dollar outhouses)....
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
Follow the Government Money
From 2000-2002 the NRDC and Environmental Defense were among the top recipients of almost $125 million in grants that federal government agencies gave for climate change-related projects. According to a recent report from the George C. Marshall Institute, NRDC took in $6.7 million in grants from left-leaning foundations and government agencies. Environmental Defense garnered just over $5 million. Does the Bush Administration know that its agencies are spending taxpayer money to fund groups opposed to its own policies? In 2004 the NRDC received over $390,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency to study how to reduce gas emissions. So not only does the NRDC lobby for legislation that will hurt American taxpayers, but the American taxpayer gets the pleasure of helping it do so. The NRDC and Environmental Defense also raise money from a Who's Who of private U.S. foundations. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation gave $300,000 to both groups to maintain the "momentum" for imposing global warming regulations. Ted Turner's foundation handed the NRDC $800,000 and Environmental Defense $100,000. The Public Welfare Foundation gave the NRDC a cool $1 million, while a more reticent Energy Foundation gave a mere $970,000 to Environmental Defense for global warming. To get around the Administration's opposition to taxing Americans for an unproven theory, many foundations also fund state-level climate change initiatives. Last year, the Pew Charitable Trusts -- one of the most aggressive foundations on climate change -- gave $550,000 to the NRDC to promote global warming initiatives in the West and Northeast....
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Follow the Government Money
From 2000-2002 the NRDC and Environmental Defense were among the top recipients of almost $125 million in grants that federal government agencies gave for climate change-related projects. According to a recent report from the George C. Marshall Institute, NRDC took in $6.7 million in grants from left-leaning foundations and government agencies. Environmental Defense garnered just over $5 million. Does the Bush Administration know that its agencies are spending taxpayer money to fund groups opposed to its own policies? In 2004 the NRDC received over $390,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency to study how to reduce gas emissions. So not only does the NRDC lobby for legislation that will hurt American taxpayers, but the American taxpayer gets the pleasure of helping it do so. The NRDC and Environmental Defense also raise money from a Who's Who of private U.S. foundations. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation gave $300,000 to both groups to maintain the "momentum" for imposing global warming regulations. Ted Turner's foundation handed the NRDC $800,000 and Environmental Defense $100,000. The Public Welfare Foundation gave the NRDC a cool $1 million, while a more reticent Energy Foundation gave a mere $970,000 to Environmental Defense for global warming. To get around the Administration's opposition to taxing Americans for an unproven theory, many foundations also fund state-level climate change initiatives. Last year, the Pew Charitable Trusts -- one of the most aggressive foundations on climate change -- gave $550,000 to the NRDC to promote global warming initiatives in the West and Northeast....
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OPINION/COMMENTARY
THE TERRORIST WORE GREEN
Law enforcement officials say the threat of attacks from ecoterrorists has become greater than from the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and right-wing militias.
John Lewis, the FBI’s deputy assistant director for counterterrorism, says his agency has seen an escalation in violent rhetoric and tactics with attacks growing in frequency and size. Harassing phone calls and vandalism now coexist with improvised explosive devices and personal threats to employees. The FBI currently has 150 pending investigations involving 35 agency field offices working with other law enforcement agencies on such cases.
Recent targets of what activists call “direct action” include laboratories, mink ranches, SUV dealerships, fast-food outlets and new housing developments. Moreover:
* The growing trend in recent years includes more than 1,200 incidents of arson, bombings, theft, animal releases, vandalism and office takeovers.
* While no deaths are attributed to ecoterror cases, officials say they had several close calls and physical property damages have totaled hundreds of millions of dollars.
* Some of the most radical organizations apparently involved are the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC).
Observers say that while acts of ecoterrorism are prosecuted under existing law, some lawmakers want to make it a federal crime to support such groups, monetarily or otherwise. Several states are considering separate laws aimed at ecoterroism, stiffening the penalty for attacks on university labs, dog food makers, farms where animals are caged and hunting businesses.
For their part, mainstream environmentalists and animal rights advocates are working to separate themselves from groups and individuals that break the law on behalf of their cause. Observers say all of the major environmental groups sent a letter to the Senate Committee strongly condemning all acts of violence, including those committed in the name of environmental causes.
Source: Brad Knickerbocker, “A Troubling Rise in Violence for Green Causes,” Christian Science Monitor, June 6, 2005.
For text: http://search.csmonitor.com/2005/0606/p03s01-ussc.html
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THE TERRORIST WORE GREEN
Law enforcement officials say the threat of attacks from ecoterrorists has become greater than from the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and right-wing militias.
John Lewis, the FBI’s deputy assistant director for counterterrorism, says his agency has seen an escalation in violent rhetoric and tactics with attacks growing in frequency and size. Harassing phone calls and vandalism now coexist with improvised explosive devices and personal threats to employees. The FBI currently has 150 pending investigations involving 35 agency field offices working with other law enforcement agencies on such cases.
Recent targets of what activists call “direct action” include laboratories, mink ranches, SUV dealerships, fast-food outlets and new housing developments. Moreover:
* The growing trend in recent years includes more than 1,200 incidents of arson, bombings, theft, animal releases, vandalism and office takeovers.
* While no deaths are attributed to ecoterror cases, officials say they had several close calls and physical property damages have totaled hundreds of millions of dollars.
* Some of the most radical organizations apparently involved are the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC).
Observers say that while acts of ecoterrorism are prosecuted under existing law, some lawmakers want to make it a federal crime to support such groups, monetarily or otherwise. Several states are considering separate laws aimed at ecoterroism, stiffening the penalty for attacks on university labs, dog food makers, farms where animals are caged and hunting businesses.
For their part, mainstream environmentalists and animal rights advocates are working to separate themselves from groups and individuals that break the law on behalf of their cause. Observers say all of the major environmental groups sent a letter to the Senate Committee strongly condemning all acts of violence, including those committed in the name of environmental causes.
Source: Brad Knickerbocker, “A Troubling Rise in Violence for Green Causes,” Christian Science Monitor, June 6, 2005.
For text: http://search.csmonitor.com/2005/0606/p03s01-ussc.html
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